^^Hf  They  Mib 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 


Sift  U.C.  Library 


Why  They  Fail 


By 
REV,  A.  T,  ROBINSON,  A.M. 


Broadway  Publishing  Co. 
835  Broadway     :    New  York 


Copyright,  1912,  hy 
A.  T.  Robinson 


To  the  faithful  Friends  of  the  Experiment, 
and  all  Parents  and  Teachers  zvhose  fingers 
are,  ziilly-nilly,  ivcaving  the  high  destinies 
of  To-morrow  under  the  skulls  of  the  dear 
boys  and  girls  of  To-day,  this  book  is  re- 
spectfully dedicated. 


630974 


CONTENTS 


Chapter  I 
Things  as  They  Are 9 

Chapter  II 
The  Confusion  of  Tongues 51 

Chapter  III 
Why  They  Fail 79 

Chapter  IV 
The  Remedy 115 

Chapter  V 
A  Contribution 163 

Chapter  VI 
Conclusion  212 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

No  apology  is  needed  for  the  candid  discussion 
of  a  great  theme.  We  beHeve  that  elaborated  in 
following  pages  to  be  of  vital  importance  to  all  true 
parents  and  patriots. 

The  writer  is  not  alone  in  this  opinion  for  some  of 
the  brightest  minds  between  the  two  oceans,  both 
in  Canada  and  the  United  States,  have  thought 
the  theme  of  this  discussion  abundantly  worth 
while.  Amongst  these  mention  is  here  gratefully 
made  of  a  devoted  elder  brother,  J.  M.  Robinson, 
of  Naramata,  B.  C,  sometimes  called  "the  Cecil 
Rhodes  of  the  Okanagan  Valley";  His  Honor,  G. 
H.  V.  Bulyea,  B.A.,  L.L.D.,  Governor  of  Alberta, 
and  that  animated  sunbeam — one  of  the  last  Sachems 
of  the  great  tribe  of  humorists  inhabiting  this  country 
in  the  closing  decades  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
whose  pens  and  voices  moved  the  world  to  laughter 
and  tears  by  turns,  Rev.  Robert  J.  Burdette,  D.D., 
pastor  emeritus  of  Temple  Baptist  Church,  Los 
Angeles,  who  writes  as  follows: 

Pasadena,  Gal. 
My  dear  friend  Robinson : 

"Good  stuff?" 

Why,  the  first  chapter  makes  a  man  want  to  read 
the  whole  book.  You  have  something  to  say,  and — 
Man !  you  do  know  how  to  say  it !    Your  book  has 


red  blood  in  it.  It  seems  to  me  you  should  be  able 
to  pick  and  choose  among  the  publishers.  The  very 
titles  of  your  chapters  make  a  good  booklet  for 
a  man  with  a  mind.  To  the  print-shop  with  your 
MS  J  It's  timely  as  twelve  o'clock.  /  like  it!  Mrs. 
Robinson's  verdict  isn't  a  wife's  partiality — it  is  a 
woman's  judgment — and  that  woman  Portia! 

Cordially  yours, 

Robert  J.  Burdette. 
Santa  Monica,  Cal. 


Why  They  Fail 


Foreword  to  Chapter  I 

"It  seems  almost  incredible  that  such  lawlessness 
and  outrage  and  chicanery  can  exist  in  America — 
many  of  the  outrages  would  disgrace  Russia  or 
Turkey — yet  every  episode  related  here  has  ten 
prototypes  in  life,  in  fact,  not  of  twenty  years  ago, 
or  yesterday,  or  the  day  before  yesterday,  but  to-day." 

Agnes  C.  Laut. 
In  "Freebooters  of  the  Wilderness." 

CHAPTER  I 

THINGS  AS  THEY  ARE 

One  day  not  long  since  the  two  following  questions 
were  sent  out  by  the  writer  to  five  hundred  of  the 
leading  business  men  between  Winnipeg  and  Vic- 
toria : 

1.  How  many  people  would  you  be  willing  to 
trust  with  $10,000  in  the  dark,  i.  e.,  assuming  they 
could  get  away  with  it  and  no  one  be  the  wiser? 

2.  What  proportion  of  our  English-speaking 
population  are  in  your  judgment  manly  men,  a 
manly  man  being  thus  defined :  A  manly  man  is 
a  man  who  stands  squarely  on  his  own  feet,  looks 
the  world  steadily  in  the  e3^e,  "plays  fair"  in  every 
game  he  enters,  holds  up  his  end  of  the  burden 


10  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

entailed  by  civilized  society,  is  magnanimous  in  vic- 
tory, and  in  defeat  takes  his  poison  without  a 
whimper? 

Of  the  replies  received,  the  average  of  votes 
showed  18.91  per  cent  for  honesty,  and  23.01  per 
cent  for  manliness.  That  is,  it  is  the  general  opin- 
ion in  that  group  of  men  that  of  the  population 
of  western  Canada,  only  18.91  per  cent  can  be 
trusted  in  the  dark  with  $10,000;  i.  e.,  are  unblench- 
ingly  upright  in  character,  and  that  only  about  23.01 
per  cent  are  characterized  by  manliness  as  that  trait 
is  described  above.  A  few  pessimists  (to  be  found 
in  every  such  drag-net  that  was  ever  let  down) 
reckoned  one  per  cent  would  be  about  right  in 
both  cases.  One  of  that  stripe,  who  is  not  without 
a  saving  sense  of  humor,  outdid  them  all  by  inti- 
mating that  there  was  only  one  man  in  Canada  who 
could  fill  that  bill  in  his  opinion,  but  his  modesty 
forbade  his  mentioning  the  name.  On  the  other 
hand,  one  gentleman  who  is  in  public  life  and  evi- 
dently takes  no  chances  on  furnishing  ammunition 
for  the  enemy's  guns,  gave  ninety-nine  per  cent  and 
seventy-five  per  cent  as  his  estimates,  while  another, 
quite  patently  a  cheerful  optimist,  simply  thought 
any  man  who  would  ask  such  questions  as  that 
"ought  to  be  taken  in  charge  by  his  friends,  if  he 
has  any." 

It  is  instructive  to  observe  that  these  replies 
came  from  men  who  are  "hard  up  against  it"  in 
every-day  life.  They  reflected,  not  the  opinions  of 
preachers,  teachers  and  editors,  but  opinions  of 
cabinet  ministers,  princes  of  the  business  world  and 
smaller  tradespeople  of  the  standard  commercial 
lines,  who  would  be  most  likely  to  have  picked  their 
wisdom  from  the  thorny  brambles  of  experience, 
and  the  verdicts  given  were  not  given  hastily,  some 
honest  souls  of  the  Puritan  brand  of  conscientious- 


WHY      THEY     F'Ain  11 

ness  having  chewed  the  end  of  reflection  for  weeks 
before  venturing  to  say  anything. 

Of  course  no  one  possessed  of  a  spoonful  of  brains 
would  presume  to  say  that  any  man,  or  any  number 
of  men,  can  answer  those  questions  correctly.  The 
Omniscient  alone  can  do  that.  But  there  is  some- 
thing in  numbers.  The  collective  opinion  is  the 
hope  of  democracy.  The  law  of  averages  comes  in 
to  pare  down  the  crudities  of  individual  judgment, 
so  that  nine  times  out  of  ten  what  five  hundred  sane 
men  think  is  bound  to  be  more  nearly  correct  than 
what  one  may  think — with  all  due  deference  to 
the  tenth  time  when  one  man  is  right  against  the 
world. 

One  thing  more  should  be  said.  It  will  be 
observed  that  the  information  was  sought  from  the 
representative  business  men  of  western  Canada. 
This  for  two  reasons — because  the  author's  home 
was  at  that  time  at  Summerland,  in  the  beautiful 
Okanagan  Valley,  now  world-famous  for  the  quality 
of  its  climate,  its  scenery  and  its  fruit,  and  partly 
because  the  general  average  of  honesty  is  perhaps 
higher  in  western  Canada  than  it  is  anywhere  else  on 
the  continent  at  the  present  time.  The  land  is  settled 
for  the  most  part  by  the  hardy,  adventurous,  ag- 
gressive type  which  scorns  weakness  and  meanness. 
Line-fence  law-suits  are  unknown,  and  petty  ac- 
tions-at-law  are  very  uncommon.  As  in  Alaska  the 
miners  used  to  leave  their  golddust  lying  about  in 
unlocked  cabins,  so  in  the  Canadian  West  doors 
are  left  unlocked  and  things  are  left  lying  about 
in  a  way  calculated  to  raise  the  hair  of  an  eastern 
man.  So  is  the  way  of  the  frontier,  for,  "East  is 
East  and  West  is  West."  This  is  not  saying  that 
when  the  West  is  as  old  as  eastern  Canada  it  will 
be  any  better.    It  may  be  far  worse. 

Again  it  may  not  be  unfair  to  infer  that  this  in- 


12  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

duction  is  symptomatic  of  conditions  in  the  Great 
Republic,  for  if  western  Canada  has  a  higher  level 
of  integrity  than  eastern  Canada,  Canada  as  a  whole 
must  be  conceded  to  have  a  level  of  integrity  as 
much  higher  than  that  of  the  United  States  as  its 
own  is  lower  than  that  of  England  and  Scotland, 
and  if  these  things  be  done  in  the  green  tree 
what  shall  be  done  in  the  dry?  No  one  who 
is  familiar  with  conditions  on  both  sides  of 
the  water  and  on  both  sides  of  the  forty-ninth 
parallel  of  latitude  will  deny  this.  Canada's  graft- 
ers and  would-be  grafters  are  cooing  doves  and 
sucking  babes  when  compared  with  the  gentlemen 
south  of  the  line.  What  little  they  know  they  got 
on  their  visits  to  New  York  and  other  large  centres, 
and  what  little  they  know  they  find  it  particularly 
hard  to  practice  over  there. 

Two  things  must  be  said  here,  though  :  One,  that 
the  Canadian  people  have  had  their  eyes  opened 
lately  to  the  drift  of  things  by  reason  of  the  pub- 
licity crusades  of  the  American  magazines;  the 
other  that  Canada  is  relatively  small  and  compara- 
tively homogeneous.  When  she  attains  a  popula- 
tion ofover  ninety  millions  with  large  admixtures 
of  foreign  blood  she  may  be  as  bad  or  even  worse, 
which  Heaven  forefend.  But  who  can  tell?  Like 
causes  produce  like  results. 

Independently,  however,  of  all  imperfect  and 
hasty  generalizations  and  inferences,  who  will  afifirm 
that  in  these  United  States  things  are  as  they  should 
be,  or  even  as  they  might  reasonably  be  expected  to 
be?  The  most  cursory  study  of  every-day  affairs 
arouses  a  suspicion  which  subsequent  investigation 
does  not  serve  to  allay,  that  there  is  a  serious  and 
wide-spread  degeneration  of  the  moral  fibre  in  the 
warp  and  woof  of  society.  Were  the  delinquency 
merely   sporadic   and   evanescent   it   might   be   re- 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  13 

garded  lightly,  no  matter  how  atrocious  the  lapse 
might  be,  since  we  have  not  yet  attained  the  golden 
age  of  moral  perfection  when  evil  shall  be  no  longer 
with  us.  But  the  fact  is  that  evils  are  apparently 
increasing  beyond  the  ratio  of  compatibility  with 
the  nation's  health.  There  must  always  be  cases  of 
physical  illness  and  we  can  stand  so  many  pneumo- 
cocci,  streptococci  and  tubercle  bacilli ;  but  when 
their  numbers  and  distribution  pass  a  certain  limit 
uneasiness  gives  place  to  implacable  hostility;  the 
people's  health  officers  get  busy,  and  woe  to  the 
luckless  wight  who  dares  to  gainsay  or  resist.  The 
evil  is  dealt  with  promptly  and  efficiently  and  it 
doesn't  make  any  difference  who  is  concerned. 
Pauper  or  plutocrat,  he  is  quarantined  for  smallpox 
and  all  the  people  rise  up  and  say,  ''Amen." 

But  with  regard  to  our  moral  and  economic 
plagues  it  is  not  quite  so.  Theoretically  the  law  of 
quarantine  is  as  clear  and  just  for  the  latter  as  for 
the  former,  but  the  difficulty  is  to  give  effect  to  the 
moral  health  regulations.  Voices  of  alarm,  of  pro- 
test, are  undoubtedly  raised  in  the  land.  Their  call 
is  a  clarion  call,  long  and  loud ;  but  somehow  it  fails 
to  do  more  than  galvanize  the  public  into  a  transient 
and  ebullient  activity.  Like  the  early  cloud  and 
the  morning  dew  the  righteous  indignation  soon 
passes  away.  Of  twenty  towns  which  abolished  the 
saloon,  eighteen  were  found  the  year  following  to 
have  elected  mayors  in  sympathy  with  the  liquor 
business.  There  seems  to  be  left  little  or  no  power 
of  persistent  and  effective  rebuke,  but  rather  an 
easy-going  tolerance  of  crimes  against  the  public 
weal  which  would  probably  have  been  better  dealt 
with  by  the  rude  and  irregular  but  mightily  effective 
methods  of  shot-gun  and  hemp  as  in  other  days. 

A  sad  and  significant  thing  is  that  our  Sir  Gala- 
hads  have  not  been  better  sustained.     While  all  of 


14  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

fair  mind  admit  the  justice  of  the  cause  they  plead, 
not  all  find  grace  to  follow  them  to  the  charge. 
Many  millions  nod  emphatic  assents,  and  if  assents 
would  clean  out  the  nests  of  evil-doers  the  work 
would  soon  be  done ;  but  unfortunately  they  won't, 
and  only  a  comparativel}'  few  thousands  of  Gideons 
are  found  to  gather  themselves  together  to  the 
battle.  Even  the  voice  of  the  prophet  of  God,  once 
so  imperative,  is  now  become  to  the  nation  as  little 
more  than  the  "sound  of  one  who  has  a  pleasant 
voice  and  can  play  well  on  an  instrument." 

If  these  things  be  true  then  it  would  seem  to  be 
high  time  to  institute  an  enquiry  into  causes,  to 
consider  candidly  any  hypothesis  and  remedy  which 
may  reasonably  be  advanced,  and  withal  to  make 
sure  of  digging  deep  about  the  very  roots  of  things 
with  the  unsparing  hand  of  the  husbandman  whose 
best  tree  is  menaced  underground. 

Few  will  be  so  foolish  as  to  think  or  say  there 
is  nothing,  or  even  little  of  good  left  in  the  nation's 
life.  To  take  up  the  refrain  of  the  poet  of  the 
Irish  melodies  and  wail  out  as  some  are  wont  to  do : 

"There's  nothing  bright  but  Heaven, 
And  false  the  light  on  Glory's  plume 
As  fading  hues  at  even. 
And  Love  and  Hope  and  Beauty's  bloom 
Are  blossoms  gathered  for  the  tomb ; 
There's  nothing  bright  but  Heaven  " 

is  simply  pietistic  pessimism,  which  is  a  shade  more 
irrational  and  vastly  less  agreeable  than  the  view 
of  the  cheerful  optimist  who  sees,  or  professes  to 
see,  nothing  wrong.  Calamity  howlers  who  howl 
merely  for  the  mournful  joy  they  find  in  doing  so 
are  not  desirable  companions  to  have  with  us,  and 
just  so  long  as  "this  sad  old  earth  must  borrow  its 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  15 

mirth,"  because  it  "has  sorrow  enough  of  its  own" — 
just  so  long  will  our  rose-water  and  nepenthe 
friends  who  see  all  things  in  the  rainbow  arch  of 
their  own  ardent  enthusiasms  find  a  warm  place 
in  our  hearts. 

But  the  very  warmth  which  the  cheerful,  fatuous 
and  ever-lovable  optimist  brings  to  us  proves  the 
chill  that  is  in  our  hearts.  We  rejoice  in  the 
November  sun  because  we  are  cold.  The  true  path- 
way lies  between  the  pessimism  which  gives  up 
discouraged  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  foolish  opti- 
mism which  does  nothing  on  the  other,  because 
everything  is  getting  on  finely  as  it  is.  Aristotle's 
golden  mean  is  much  to  be  desired.  A  sane  view 
which  takes  in  things  as  they  are  is  the  best  prepa- 
ration for  therapeutic  treatment  of  conditions. 

Such  a  view  at  once  reveals  the  wealth  of  good 
in  the  nation's  life  at  the  present  time.  The  great 
Hartford  humorist  in  cynical  moments  may  talk 
confidentially  in  poisoned  adjectives  of  what  he  was 
pleased  to  term  "the  damned  human  race,"  but 
most  of  us  would  rather  adopt  the  phrase  of  which 
the  cultured  and  scholarly  sociologist,  Dr.  C.  R. 
Henderson,  is  so  fond,  and  speak  of  "the  climbing 
majority,"  for  the  leaven  of  the  Christ  spirit  is 
everywhere  in  evidence.  A  century  ago  the  world 
was  egoistic  body  and  soul.  Carey,  the  apostle  of 
modern  missions,  was  lampooned  as  a  fool  and  a 
fanatic  even  by  those  who  bore  the  sacred  name  of 
the  Supreme  Missionary.  Religion  was  for  the  most 
part  a  form,  a  fad,  or  a  cloak.  Lord  Melbourne, 
stalking  indignantly  out  of  church  during  the  serv- 
ice muttering  that  "things  have  come  to  a  pretty 
pass  when  religion  invades  the  sphere  of  private 
life,"  is  typical  of  the  body  of  public  sentiment 
in  that  day.  At  the  same  time  slaves  clanked  their 
chains  and  nursed  their  horrors  in  hopeless  silence; 


16  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

disease,  filth  and  death  held  high  carnival  in  prisons 
filled  with  people  confined  there  for  the  most  part 
because  they  had  been  unfortunate  in  meeting  their 
financial  obligations ;  women  and  small  children 
wore  out  their  lives  in  exhausting  toil  in  foul  mines 
and  fouler  factories ;  "wine  and  wassail"  were  so 
common  that  the  grossest  inebriety  marked  not 
only  society  generally  but  the  very  priests  of  Christ 
as  well.  And  as  for  political  corruption,  it  was  but 
a  short  time  before  that  that  Horace  Walpole,  the 
statesman,  could  say  "every  man  has  his  price," 
and  a  little  earlier  still,  as  Lord  Macaulay  informs 
us,  that  the  very  navy  of  Britain,  the  protecting 
aegis  of  the  "tight  little  isle,"  was  so  helplessly  in 
the  grip  of  grafters  that  the  very  ships  of  the  line 
were  deflected  to  the  carrying  of  private  merchan- 
dise, while  the  one  hope  of  safety  for  the  crew  in 
rough  weather  lay  in  getting  the  land-owning, 
gentleman-captain  so  intoxicated  he  could  not  go  on 
deck  in  order  that  one  of  the  seamen  might  have 
a  chance  to  take  his  place  at  the  helm. 

Thus  we  see  that  however  recent  the  word  "graft" 
may  be  the  thing  itself  is  neither  new  nor  indigen- 
ous to  American  soil.  It  bloomed  luxuriantly  long 
before  we  had  existence  as  a  nation  and  its  rankest 
growth  came  from  a  hard  soil  of  unadulterated 
human  selfishness.  Altruism,  which  exists  to-day  in 
a  thousand  institutions  of  charity  and  in  ten  thous- 
and laws  for  the  amelioration  of  social  conditions, 
ranging  from  the  merciful  international  restrictions 
of  the  grim  dogs  of  war  by  the  Red  Cross  Society 
down  to  the  protection  of  the  mongrel  cur  in  Para- 
dise Lane,  was  then  a  word  known  only  to  dilettanti 
philosophers,  who  nourished  their  intellectual  pride 
and  spent  their  strength  in  wrangling  over  the  finely 
sublimated  attenuosities  of  metaphysics  and  the 
elusive  subjectivities  of  moral  distinctions. 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  17 

Yet  in  spite  of  all  this  g-lorious  advance  upward 
in  the  spiral  of  human  progress  there  is  somewhat 
against  us.  If,  looking  backward,  we  are  vastly  to 
the  good,  looking  forward  we  have  fallen  painfully 
short.  Our  day  is  not  as  theirs.  We  sin  against 
light.  Twilight  is  one  thing;  the  full  blaze  of 
twentieth-century  knowledge  is  quite  another.  We 
must  be  judged  by  those  standards  of  information 
and  opportunity  which  characterize  our  day.  And 
who  shall  say,  judging  by  such  a  metewand,  that 
we  are  what  we  might  reasonably  be  expected  to 
be?  One  hundred  years  ago  in  aristocratic  old  Eng- 
land, the  masses  were  not  enfranchised.  They  were 
not  free.  The  peerage  dominated  both  Church  and 
State.  We  have  no  feudal  institutions,  we  have  no 
established  church ;  we  do  have  every  necessary  in- 
strument of  political  and  economic  freedom,  and 
yet  we  are  the  slaves  of  corporate  greed  and  groups 
of  vile  conspirators  beside  whom  Cataline  stands 
forth  as  a  patriot.  We  have  the  light  and  the  power 
and  the  opportunity  to  be  free,  to  be  clean,  yet  the 
body  politic  is  full  of  sores,  needless  sores,  un- 
sightly sores,  intolerable  sores. 

The  most  cursory  survey  of  our  common  life 
makes  this  painfully  evident.  If  we  look,  for  in- 
stance, at  the  nation's  life  as  it  manifests  itself  in  the 
heart-beat  of  our  chambers  of  legislation,  what  do 
we  see?  Theoretically  and  popularly  legislators  are 
the  servants  of  the  people.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  are 
they?  "Peer"  was  once  "par,"  an  equal;  even  so  is 
the  jest,  "your  obedient  servant"  in  the  official  docu- 
ments of  our  day.  The  servants  we  exalt  to  do  our 
bidding  stand  on  our  necks,  count  it  condescension 
to  speak  to  many  of  their  electors  on  the  street, 
and  in  scores  of  instances  busy  themselves  chiefly 
in  lining  their  own  nests  and  those  of  their  friends 
with  our  feathers.    And  for  all  this,  as  one  excited 


18  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

protestant  put  it  one  night  on  the     platform,  we 
are  supposed  to  "kiss  the  hand  that  kicks  us." 

The  wealthy  gentleman  of  ancient  Athens 
counted  it  an  honor  to  be  permitted  to  fit  out  a 
trireme,  oars,  sails,  paint  and  all,  for  the  defense 
of  the  republic,  but  in  our  day  the  wealthy  gentle- 
man of  New  York,  Chicago  or  Massachusetts  would 
rather  cast  a  golden  lariat  over  the  legislators  of 
the  republic  to  lead  them  around  for  his  own  private 
use.     Let  a  man  of  affairs  speak. 

The  man  is  Herbert  E.  Miles,  a  manufacturer  of 
farming  implements  and  he  is  speaking  through  the 
Review  of  Reviews  (Vol.  1909,  p.  82).  After  inti- 
mating that  the  secret  of  the  trusts  lies  in  "the 
criminally  unjust  tariff  drawn  up  by  men  grossly 
ignorant  of  that  complex  phase  of  economics,"  while 
Germany  had  a  body  of  twenty  experts  employed 
for  twenty  years  in  preparing  a  tariff,  "consulting 
in  that  time  two  thousand  other  experts  in  an  inquiry 
that  was  exhaustive,  non-partisan  and  semi-judicial," 
and  changed  in  only  one  particular  by  the  Reichstag 
after  months  of  deliberation,  he  goes  on  to  say : 

"The  Dingley  committee  had  among  its  members 
only  four  men,  Messrs.  Dingley,  Payne,  Dalzell  and 
Hopkins,  a  newspaper  editor  and  three  attorneys 
and  Mr.  McMillan  of  the  minority,  with  previous 
experience.  That  men  so  inexperienced  should  have 
hastily  made  a  tariff  for  this  country  was  worse 
than  a  blunder — it  was  a  crime.  They  only  made  a 
great,  blind  jab  at  the  task.  They  began  wrong  by 
taking  classifications  more  than  a  generation  old, 
inapplicable  to  our  time,  having  neither  knowledge 
nor  time  to  consider  that  important  phase  of  the 
subject  adequately.  Consequently  we  have  had 
thirty  thousand  lawsuits  on  classifications  alone, 
nine-tenths  of  which  might  have  been  avoided.  They 
put  together  in  one  classification,  for  instance,  but- 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  19 

tons,  stoves,  electric  fans,  revolvers,  nails,  dress  trim- 
mings, railway  cars,  enamelled  portraits,  'cannon 
for  war  and  crosses  for  churches.'  With  the  en- 
actment of  this  law  the  United  States  Government 
went  into  the  trust-making  business  up  to  its  eyes. 
It  was  controlled  by  no  guiding  principles,  no  rule 
of  measurement.  Rates  were  doled  out  like  liquor 
at  a  revel. 

"Congress  in  its  refusal  to  establish  the  machinery 
necessary  to  the  securing  and  collation  of  exact  and 
underlying  information  in  the  making  of  the  com- 
ing tariff,  rests  only  upon  a  bull-headed  insistence 
upon  ancient  habit,  and  back  of  this  insistence  is 
seen  the  ugly  vision  of  trusts,  a  greater  part  of 
whose  revenues  comes  from  the  excesses  of  loosely- 
made  tariffs.  .  .  .  Take  my  own  business  for  in- 
stance :  A  twenty  per  cent  duty  would  more  than 
cover  the  difference  in  cost  of  production  here  and 
abroad.  The  duty  is,  however  on  many  products, 
forty-five  per  cent.  In  this  prohibitive  duty  lies 
a  Congressional  permit  amounting  to  an  invitation 
that  those  engaged  in  my  industry  consolidate,  form 
a  trust  under  this  Congressional  permit  which  de- 
livers the  home  market  to  us  exclusively  and  add 
to  our  prices  the  difference  between  the  necessary 
twenty  per  cent  of  production  and  the  forty-five  per 
cent  given  in  the  law.  Intelligent  business  men 
are  to  be  expected  to  make  use  of  an  advantage  like 
this  especially  granted  by  Congress,  and  this  is  just 
what  every  one  of  your  big  trusts  has  done. 
.  .  .  The  Standard  Oil  Company,  for  instance, 
which  heads  the  list,  has  a  total  wage  cost  of  six 
per  cent,  while  the  duty  is  for  the  main  part  ninety- 
nine  per  cent,  or  fifteen  times  the  wage  cost,  and 
this  remember,  first  given  in  the  so-called  free  trade 
Wilson  law,  and  continued  in  the  Dingley  law.  The 
Heedlessness  of  this  rate  is  evidenced  by  the  fact 


20  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

that  this  trust  shipped  abroad  last  year  $78,228,819, 
selling  it  on  the  international  market,  as  the  Bureau 
of  Corporations  discloses,  at  thirty-five  to  sixty-five 
per  cent  less  price  than  charged  our  domestic  con- 
sumers. The  tariff  fattens  this  one  trust  to  the 
extent  of  $35,000,000  a  year,  and  yet  Congressional 
'dignity  and  economy'  propose  to  leave  the  con- 
sumers open  to  dozens  of  like  abuses  rather  than 
spend  $100,000  per  year  on  a  safe-guarding  com- 
mission." 

And  so  on  with  the  Steel  Trust,  the  Linseed  Oil 
Trust,  the  Locomotive  Trust  and  a  long  list  of 
others. 

Now^,  as  has  been  intimated,  our  legislators  are 
not  supposed  to  be  mean  men.  Presumably  they  are 
the  Sauls  of  the  Great  Tribe,  chosen  to  do  for  us 
because  they  stand  head  and  shoulders  above  their 
fellows,  because  each  one  is  to  those  who  know 
him  best  "the  expectancy  and  rose  of  state,"  if  not 
"the  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form."  And 
yet — and  yet — how  many  of  them,  judging  by  these 
tariff  tokens,  can  be  trusted  with  $10,000  of  the 
government  money  in  the  dark,  i.  e.,  assuming  that  they 
could  get  away  with  it  and  nobody  be  the  wiser? 

Charity  suggests  that  the  most  of  them  know  not 
what  they  do ;  that  they  are  led  like  sheep  to  the 
slaughter  by  the  party  leaders;  that  they  dare  not 
come  back  to  their  constituents  empty-handed  from 
the  general  raid  on  the  public  plunder,  and  yet,  if 
they  are  not  good  little  boys  and  do  not  stand  pat 
and  do  just  as  they  are  told  in  the  Big  House  they 
won't  get  any  pie ;  and  so  there  they  are  in  a  very 
tight  place  indeed,  the  one  way  out  being  apparently 
to  do  as  they  are  told  by  the  elder  brothers  of  the 
party  and  let  them  take  the  responsibility. 

All  of  which  may  be  and  undoubtedly  is  true, 
but  as  the  patch  for  the  "honesty"  burn  has  to  be 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  21 

taken  from  the  "manliness"  leg,  the  skin-grafting 
on  the  honorable  gentleman's  character  seems  to 
be  of  that  doubtful  sort  illustrated  by  the  Irishman 
who  would  make  his  blanket  longer  by  cutting  off 
six  inches  at  the  bottom  and  sewing  it  on  at  the 
top. 

Mr.  Thomas  Lawson  affirms  in  public  print  that 
the  members  of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  are 
bought  up  like  fish,  like  decayed  fish  in  the  market. 
Then  he  says  it  again  more  loudly,  in  large  type, 
so  that  all  may  hear.  And  no  man  lays  hands  on 
him.  Why?  Evidently  because  there  must  have 
been  more  truth  than  poetry  in  the  statement.  And 
there  are  not  wanting  evidences  of  like  conditions 
elsewhere. 

Who  has  not  heard  of  "the  sneak"  or  "the  joker," 
that  clause,  comma  or  other  device  slipped  sur- 
reptitiously into  a  bill  with  a  view  to  nullifying  the 
whole  thing?  Maybe  it  is  a  comma  that  is  left 
out — ostensibly  the  printer's  error,  as  in  the  famous 
case  providing  for  the  free  entry  of  fruit  plants, 
where  the  failure  to  insert  a  comma  between  "fruit" 
and  "plants"  cost  the  country  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  dollars  in  loss  of  customs  receipts;  or  may  be 
it  is  the  alleged  misprint  of  a  word,  as  in  another 
case  where  the  sale  of  a  piece  of  property  to  the 
lozvcst  bidder  was  authorized.  Legislation  swarms 
with  this  kind  of  chicanery,  which  in  principle  is 
wholesale  forgery  and  daylight  robbery.  To  take 
what  does  not  belong  to  me  is  theft.  How  it  is 
done  or  from  whom  does  not  alter  the  essential 
nature  of  the  transaction.  To  steal  from  a  poor  man 
may  cause  more  misery  than  to  steal  from  a  million- 
aire, but  the  offense  is  at  bottom  the  same.  Yet  it 
is  strange  how  many  people  there  are  who  seem  to 
think  they  would  be  doing  God  service  if  they 
helped    themselves   to    things    belonging   to    some 


22  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

wealthy  citizen,  corporation  or  the  government — 
especially  the  government.  As  if  stealing  from  a 
million  people  is  any  the  less  stealing  than  stealing 
from  one !  By  whatever  devil's  logic  we  may  seek 
to  justify  such  a  transaction,  happily  conscience, 
that  priceless  watchdog  of  our  highest  welfare,  always 
bays  a  protest,  which  protest  we  do  well  to  heed. 

As  Attorney-General  Bonaparte,  of  the  Roose- 
velt Administration,  observed,  "The  underlying  evil 
in  our  national  affairs  is  simply  dishonesty,"  but 
it  would  be  a  mistake  to  think  that  our  legislators 
have  a  monopoly  of  it.  It  is  easy  to  throw  mud 
at  the  man  on  the  pedestal.  He  makes  a  good  tar- 
get ;  but  there  is  never  such  a  target  bespattered 
with  mud  but  a  good  many  dirty  fingers  may  be 
found  in  the  vicinity.  The  old  proverb  which  says 
"like  priest,  like  people"  should  be  amended  to  read, 
"like  people,  like  legislators,"  for  it  is  only  a  shallow 
interpretation  of  life  which  does  not  look  on  law- 
maker and  law-administrator  as  an  effect  rather  than 
a  cause,  a  resultant  of  the  forces  that  made  them 
rather  than  a  guiding  inspiration  of  the  nation's 
character.  One-third  of  the  electors  of  Adams 
County,  Ohio,  were  indicted  for  receiving  bribes  in 
the  election  of  1910.  Mr.  La  Follette's  election 
expenses  were  $4,000.00,  while  his  opponent's  were 
$400,000.00,  and  in  another  riding  the  contest  cost 
one  of  the  candidates  $107,000.00.  For  what?  The 
bad  bo}^  comes  from  a  bad  home,  and  if  little  Billy 
is  shifty,  sneaky  and  strongly  disposed  to  be  light- 
fingered,  it  doesn't  require  any  Sherlock  Holmes 
sagacity  to  form  a  conception  of  his  immediate  pa- 
ternal ancestor. 

After  all,  it  may  be  we  are  too  thoughtless  in  our 
abuse  of  those  who  sit  in  the  seats  of  the  mighty. 
We  do  not  have  sufficient  sympathy  for  them.  The 
man  on  the  masthead  knows  wind  pressures  of 
which  we  are,  it  may  be  fortunately  for  us,  ignorant. 


WHY      THEY     F'Ain  23 

Half  the  time  we  should  be  praying  for  these  men 
instead  of  abusing  them.  The  chances  are  they  put 
up  a  far  bigger  struggle  with  themselves  in  the 
effort  to  do  right  than  we  know  anything  about. 
It  is  quite  probable  that  few  if  any  of  them  would 
be  untrue  to  their  trust  if  the  currents  which  swirl 
about  their  feet  were  not  so  fierce.  It  is  equally 
probable  that  nine-tenths  of  us  if  we  were  in  their 
place  would  do  no  better  and  may  be  not  half  so 
well.  The  fact  is,  it  is  hard  for  these  men  and  for 
us  all  to  do  right,  and  the  trouble  is  in  ourselves — 
a  fatal  weakness  due  chiefly  to  the  one  fatal  over- 
sight in  our  youthful  education,  with  which  it  will 
be  the  special  business  of  this  treatise  to  deal  later 
on.  Meanwhile,  let  it  be  reaffirmed  that  our  men 
in  public  life  are  not  necessarily  "sinners  above  all 
that  dwell  in  Jerusalem."  Most  of  the  men  who 
look  on  would  be  as  bad  but  that  they  lack  oppor- 
tunity. If  it  were  not  so  they  would  not  allow 
others  to  do  it  in  their  name  and  at  their  expense. 
Just  so  long  as  the  electors  tolerate  crookedness  in 
public  life,  just  so  long  will  crookedness  of  infinite 
variety  abound,  human  nature  remaining  as  it  is; 
and  the  electors  are  likely  to  tolerate  it  for  an 
indefinite  time — until  such  time  as  we  can  produce  a 
race  of  men  who  will  find  themselves  much  more 
able  to  do  the  good  they  knozv  than  it  is  our  good 
fortune  to  have  produced  up  to  the  present  moment. 

It  is  hard  for  the  stream  to  reach  higher  than  its 
source.  Clean  electors  will  soon  make  clean  Con- 
gressmen and  clean  politics.  At  present  the  Con- 
gressman often  finds  that  when  he  would  do  good, 
evil  is  present  with  him  in  the  form  of  electoral 
friends,  who  apparently  think  they  have  elected  him 
to  look  after  their  especial  interests,  regardless  of 
his  country's  prior  claims. 

Theodore  Roosevelt,  whose  life  strikingly  exem- 


24  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

plifies  those  qualities  for  the  development  of  which  this 
book  pleads,  in  an  article  on  "A  Remedy  for  some 
Forms  of  Selfish  Legislation,"  in  the  Outlook  (Aug. 
6,  1910)  refers  to  another  article  by  a  Congressman 
of  ten  years'  standing,  showing  the  reason  why  the 
"pork  barrel"  special  tariff  favors  and  private  pen- 
sion bills  became  law,  the  reason  being  that  the  dictum 
of  the  constituency  to  Congressmen  is,  get  all  you  can 
for  US.  There  are  no  restrictions  upon  his  methods 
of  getting  it. 

"This  serious  charge  against  the  American  peo- 
ple," says  Mr.  Roosevelt,  "for  which  there  is  un- 
questionably too  much  justification,  the  author  pro- 
ceeds to  substantiate  by  relating  some  of  his  own 
experiences  with  his  constituents,  which,  however 
surprising  they  may  seem  to  the  general  reader, 
will  seem  almost  commonplace  to  all  who  know 
how  the  average  constituency  does,  in  acual  prac- 
ice,  treat  its  Congressman. 

"While  the  Payne-Aldrich  tarifif  law  was  under 
consideration  in  May,  1909,  he  received  a  letter  from 
a  powerful  commercial  association  in  his  district 
urging  him  by  a  unanimous  resolution  to  use  every 
efifort  to  have  the  duties  on  three  products  named 
increased  one  cent  on  one,  and  one-half  cent  per 
pound  on  the  other  two  respectively.  He  got  the 
half-cent  on  the  two  and  prevented  reduction  on  the 
other  A  year  later  when  the  clamor  arose  against 
the  bill,  the  same  association  denounced  the  bill  as 
'the  most  iniquitous  measure  ever  enacted  by  Con- 
gress' and  requested  him  to  reply  by  letter  why  he 
had  voted  to  pass  the  bill.  On  producing  their  letter 
they  dropped  their  demand  for  an  explanation.  At 
the  same  time  a  leading  paper  of  his  district,  while 
the  bill  was  under  debate,  editorially  commended 
him  for  his  'intelligent  efforts'  in  behalf  of  the  dis- 
trict and  a  year  later  denounced  him  as  one  of  'the 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  25 

legislative  banditti  responsible  for  the  Payne- Aid- 
rich  measure.'  " 

Another  illustration  cited  in  the  article  concerned 
the  minister  of  a  large  and  wealthy  church   who 

wrote  him  to  get  a  pension  for  ,  a  dependent 

member  of  his  congregation.  He  admits  the  man 
deserted  during  the  second  year  of  the  war  but 
adds,  "There  must  be  some  way  the  matter  can  be 

covered  up  and  be  given  a  pensionable  status. 

Everyone  seems  to  be  able  to  get  a  pension.  Why 
not  he?"  And  this  is  no  isolated  example  for  the 
Congessman  adds  that  he  has  "hundreds  of  such 
letters  filed  away.  So  has  every  other  Congress- 
man." 

Another,  according  to  the  article,  wanted  his 
name  put  on  the  free  mailing  list  for  all  public 
documents.  Investigation  showed  he  wanted  the 
several  tons  of  paper  per  month  involved  in  his 
modest  request,  to  use  as  raw  material  for  his  waste 
paper  factory. 

It  is  said  that  more  old  soldiers  are  now  drawing  a 
pension  after  the  lapse  of  forty-four  years  than  were 
mustered  out  after  the  peace  at  Richmond.  A  miracle 
truly— either  of  graft  or  of  longevity.  "You  pays 
your  money  an'  you  takes  your  choice." 

No  wonder  Professor  Frank  Giddings  should  say, 
"We  are  witnessing  to-day,  beyond  question,  the 
decay, — perhaps  not  permanent,  but  at  any  rate 
the  decay — of  republican  institutions.  No  man  in 
his  right  mind  can  deny  it." 

And  what  better  is  it  in  our  municipal  govern- 
ment? The  administration  of  our  city  affairs  has 
long  been  the  scandal  of  the  world.  It  is  hardly 
possible  that  corruption  could  have  attained  to 
greater  lengths  in  purely  heathen  lands  than  it  has 
reached  in  this  land  of  open  Bibles  and  Christian 
temples.     To  judge  simply  by  some  of  the  doings 


26  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

in  our  great  cities,  Zeus,  Bacchus  and  Venus  might 
be  their  chief  presiding  divinities  rather  than  the 
pure   and   beneficent    triune   Jehovah.      What   shame 
of  ancient  Rome  is  there  which  cannot  be  paralleled 
within  our  borders  under  protection  of  our  police? 
If  there  are  deplorable  and  reprehensible  lapses  and 
abuses  in  the  legislative  halls  of  our  nation  some 
poor  stagger  at  extenuation  might  be  made  by  refer- 
ring to   the  vastness   and   variety   of  the   interests 
involved,   coupled   with  the   limited   time  available 
for  the  actual  transaction  of  business;  but  our  cities 
are  not  so  situated.     They  are  sizable  propositions 
in  every  way.     Their  sons  have  grown  up  in  them, 
know  them  well  and  could  in  a  few  hours  have  first- 
hand   information,    if    they    so    desired,    on    almost 
every  point  under  investigation.     The  afifairs  of  a 
city  even  as  large  as  New  York  are  not  so  large  that 
a  score  of  competent  men  could  not  handle  them 
easily  were  the  crooked  places  made  straight.  ]\Iany 
a  business  has  a  turnover  as  large  as  that  of  our 
metropolitan  expenditures.  London,  which  is  nearly 
twice  the  size  of  New  York,  is  governed  honestly. 
Business  men  of  acknowledged  ability  and  integrity 
are  in  charge  of  its  interests,  and  no  one  dreams 
of  charging  malfeasance  of  ofifice.     Errors  of  judg- 
ment may  be  charged,  are  charged,  and  that  with 
great  spirit,  but  crookedness  is  not  even  hinted  at. 
And  if  that  can  be  done  in  London  it  should  be  done 
in  New  York  where  the  public  debt  has  reached  the 
enormous    total    of    a    thousand    million    dollars,    or 
within  about  thirty-two  millions  of  being  as  large  as 
the  interest-bearing  debt  of  the  nation  with  its  army, 
its  navy,  its  wars  and  its  ninety  millions  of  people. 

But  it  is  not  done  in  New  York.  Boss  Tweed, 
stealing  New  York  City  Hall  and  then  renting  it 
to  the  citizens  at  so  much  per,  is  the  most  significant 
joke  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,    That  was  a  good 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  27 

many  years  ago,  before  electric  light  and  wireless 
had  come  into  the  world  to  tell  us  about  what 
other  people  are  doing.  But  the  more  general  dif- 
fusion of  light  and  intelligence  does  not  seem  to 
have  much  disturbed  the  rats  in  Tammany  Hall. 
It  is  even  probable  that  if  Boss  Tweed  could  come 
back  to  his  old  haunts  he  would  find  that  his  suc- 
cessors in  ofhce  had  vastly  bettered  his  instructions. 
Mr.  George  Gibbe  Turner,  writing  in  McClure's 
Magazine  (1909)  says,  in  speaking  of  Tammany's 
control  of  New  York : 

"From  1894  to  the  present  day — fifteen  years — 
it  (the  Democratic  Party)  has  been  in  charge  of 
New  York  two-thirds  of  the  time.  In  all  that 
period,  with  one  doubtful  exception,  it  has  never 
had  one  majority  of  the  popular  vote  at  a  city 
election  that  was  not  obtained  through  the  votes 
of  trained  bands  of  'repeaters'  composed  largely 
of  professional  criminals.  The  history  of  this  arti- 
ficial control  of  a  population  of  four  million  people 
and  an  annual  expenditure  of  one  hundred  fifty 
million  dollars,  and  its  disastrous  results,  is  strik- 
ing and  important.  .  .  .  The  government  of  the 
second  largest  city  in  the  world,  when  the  system 
is  in  full  working  order,  depends  at  bottom  upon 
the  will  of  the  criminal  population — principally 
thieves  and  pimps.  The  Eighteenth  Century  gov- 
ernments founded  on  mercenary  troops  offer  mild 
examples  of  social  decadence  as  compared  with 
this." 

If  we  cross  the  continent  to  the  western  gateway 
of  the  nation  we  find  in  San  Francisco  a  state  of 
affairs  that  in  1907  at  least  was  not  very  much 
better.  There  the  grafting  oil  seemed  to  have 
diiTused  itself  till  every  cog  in  the  wheels  of  busi- 
ness was  smeared  with  it.  Hardly  a  wheel  would 
move  without  it.     It  became  the  conditio  sine  qua 


Z8  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

non  of  conducting  business  at  all.  The  "itching 
pahn"  did  not  follow  the  prosperous;  it  effectively 
blocked  their  way  till  it  was  sufficiently  greased. 
Save  in  the  veneer  of  politeness  with  which  it  was 
done  and  that  the  thieves  wore  the  garb  of  the 
people,  the  hold-up  did  not  differ  essentially  from 
that  of  the  highway  robber.  But  that  mattered 
little  to  the  loser,  whose  one  recourse  was  appar- 
ently to  raise  his  prices  and  to  take  it  out  of  the 
next  wretch  who  came  along  to  the  doomed  city. 
Mr.  Lincoln  Steffens  whose  long  probe  has  profit- 
ably explored  more  than  one  grievous  ulcer  under 
the  galled  withers  of  the  people,  says,  in  the  Ameri- 
can Magazine  for  1908: 

"The  'Fight  Trust'  was  one  of  the  schemes  by 
which  the  vices  of  the  city  were  being  organized 
and  brought  under  orderly  and  profitable  control. 
The  supervisors  used  to  grant  permits  for  the  prize 
fights.  The  several  sporting  rings  quarrelled  over 
the  privilege  till  Reuf  and  the  mayor  brought  to- 
gether the  leaders  into  a  company  which  was  to 
have  a  monopoly  of  prize  fighting.  The  other  vice 
grafts  were  saloons,  bawdy  houses,  gambling  joints, 
slot  machines  and  common  crimes  like  burglaries, 
highway  robberies,  pocket-picking,  etc." 

To  that  list  he  adds  on  the  strength  of  the  in- 
vestigation conducted  by  Mr.  Heney,  a  list  of  larger 
game— "Light,"  "Telephone,"  "Street  Railways," 
"Real  Estate,"  and  goes  on  to  say : 

"There  was  more.  Lonergan  had  the  milk  graft 
permitting  favored  dairymen  to  sell  milk  that 
wasn't  necessarily  'pure,'  especially  to  hospitals,  for 
he  let  this  privilege  as  chairman  of  the  hospital 
committee.  Mike  Coffee,  as  chairman  of  the  com- 
mittee on  printing,  had  a  rake-off  on  printers'  sup- 
plies; Nicholaus,  as  chairman  of  'Furniture'  had  ten 
per  cent  on  all  'furnishing'  bills,  and  so  on.     This 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  29 

was  the  custom  in  San  Francisco  and  it  is  the 
custom  in  most  cities  and  states  to  have  each  com- 
mittee represent  a  graft.  And  that,  by  the  way, 
is  why  we  see  our  legislators  fighting  so  often  to 
be  assigned  to  preferred  committees.  We  despise 
all  this  political  graft,  but  it  must  be  understood 
that  this  is  one  of  the  ways  by  which  the  big 
organized  grafts  pay  our  representatives  to  betray 
us.  Every  traitor  must  get  'his,'  as  Gallagher  illustrates : 
Having  no  committee  graft  all  his  own  the  president 
of  the  board  received  ten  per  cent  on  all  bills  which 
he  O.  K.'d  for  collection  for  all  supplies !  What  are 
the  big  grafts  in  which  they  all  shared?  Look  back 
over  the  list:  Vice,  gas,  telephone,  street  railways, 
and  real  estate  speculation." 

And  so  on  with  the  other  great  centres  of  population. 
Boston's  Good  Government  League  in  its  first  re- 
port laid  its  finger  on  one  leak  of  a  million  dollars. 
Chicago,  dominated  and  despoiled  for  years  by  an 
illiterate  ward  heeler,  John  Caughlin,  whose  twc 
bar-tending  aldermanic  satellites  rejoiced  in  the 
names  of  "Hinky  Dink"  and  "J^wney"  Powers 
never  failed  him  in  any  villainy,  is  another  classic 
example  of  our  civic  misgovernment.  The  mainten- 
ance of  its  infernal  royalty  of  graft  cannot  have  cost 
that  city  less  than  fifty  million  dollars.  Phila- 
delphia, Pittsburgh,  Albany,  St.  Louis,  New 
Orleans — but  what's  the  use  of  citing  others?  Has 
not  every  city  its  own  disgusting  array  of  soiled 
linen  to  be  washed,  its  people  hypnotized  by  the 
glitter  of  infected  wealth,  or  stupefied  by  the  aromas 
of  the  party  medicine  bag;  inane,  helpless,  knowing, 
protesting,  making  hideous  grimaces,  mimic  ges- 
tures indicative  of  dire  happenings  later  on,  but 
apparently  powerless  to  do  anything,  because,  you 
see,  that  seventy-seven  per  cent  of  manliness  can- 
not be  reckoned  on  in  a  hard  scrimmage.     Well 


30  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

might  the  editor  of  a  leading  magazine  observe: 

"We  who  would  enter  the  lists  in  behalf  of  the 
people  betrayed  by  those  appointed  to  represent 
them  need  not  go  far  afield.  The  black  trail  of 
those  who  are  disgracing  representative  govern- 
ment can  be  followed  across  the  continent.  Here 
the  people's  will  is  nullified  by  bribery;  there  a 
city  council  is  honey-combed  with  graft ;  further  on 
a  United  States  senator  buys  his  election;  another 
whole  city  government  is  devoted  to  robbing  the 
city  treasury ;  and  so  on  to  the  coast.  Why  do 
common  honesty  and  the  sense  of  civic  rights  so 
often  and  so  conspicuously  fail?  Are  men  cheap? 
Is  money  dear?  Or  is  the  mere  possession  of  it 
of  more  account  than  honor?  Whatever  the  prem- 
ise, who  is  putting  paltry  dollars  in  the  scale 
against  men?  The  Cosmopolitan  has  undertaken 
to  find  out,  and  at  the  start  of  the  trail  has 
uncovered  Privilege  and  Big  Business  at  the  capital 
o-  the  Empire  State." 

"Ill  fares  the  land,  to  hastening  ills  a  prey, 
Where  wealth  accumulates  and  men  decay." 

Even  that  last  refuge  of  the  helpless,  the  Temple 
of  Justice,  has  been  unable  to  stand  out  against  the 
general  moral  infection.  Its  own  lofty  ideals  do 
not  appear  to  have  been  for  it  a  sufficient  prophy- 
lactic. Plainly  justice  should  be  made  easy  for  the 
poor,  always  the  under  dog  in  a  fight.  The  scales 
should  be  held  in  an  even  hand.  Right  should  be 
done  in  the  courts  if  anywhere.  But  is  right  done 
in  the  courts  and  is  justice  made  easy  of  access  to 
those  most  likely  to  need  it?  Far  from  it.  Justice 
is  most  apt  to  be  accorded  the  man  who  can  pay  well 
for  it.  So  numerous  are  the  kinks  and  quirks  of  the 
law  that,  apart  altogether   from  such  hideous  trav- 


PVHY      THEY     FAIL  31 

esties  of  justice  as  are  described  by  Judge  Benjamin 
B.  Lindsey,  of  Colorado,  where  the  courts  would 
appear  to  have  been  the  menial  servants  of  mori- 
bund corporations,  a  civil  case,  instead  of  being 
speedily  tried  on  its  merits,  may  be  made  to  "drag 
a  lengthening  chain"  till  the  plaintiff  is  financially 
worn  out.  As  a  simple  matter  of  fact  the  processes 
of  law  are  so  interminable  and  costly  that,  unless 
the  amount  involved  be  a  very  large  sum  indeed, 
a  man  is  very  foolish  to  go  to  law  to  recover  his 
rights.  He  would  far  better  "bear  the  ills  he  has 
than  fly  to  others  he  knows  not  of." 

Much  has  been  written  on  the  abuses  of  the 
criminal  law.  Among  other  things  might  be  men- 
tioned Mr.  Hugh  C.  Weir's  article  in  The  World 
To-day  (June,  1909).  It  is  both  lucid  and  infor- 
mative, and  it  does  not  hesitate  to  brand  the 
criminal  law  as  the  scandal  of  the  civilized  world. 
There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  about  that.  President 
Taft,  as  quoted,  admits  this  when  he  says  it  is  "a 
disgrace  to  civilization."  Judge  Amidon,  of  Dakota, 
adds  his  quota  to  much  similar  testimony  when  he 
says:  "We  have  long  since  passed  the  time  when 
it  is  possible  to  convict  an  innocent  man.  The 
problem  which  confronts  us  to-day  is  whether  we 
can  convict  a  guilty  man."  The  judge  may  well 
make  that  remark  when  it  can  be  said  that  only  one 
murderer  out  of  fifty  ever  suffers  punishment  of  any 
kind.  General  Bingham,  Police  Commissioner  of 
New  York,  and  therefore  a  man  not  without  experi- 
ence in  such  matters,  assures  us  that  "the  law  en- 
courages the  criminal."  Who  will  affirm  that  he 
has  not  some  ground  for  his  complaint  when  he 
finds  that  out  of  two  hundred  thousand  cases,  one 
hundred  and  sixty  thousand  get  off  with  white-washed 
sentences  or  acquittals.  Philadelphia  in  two  years 
produces  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  indictments  for 


32  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

murder,  of  which  one  hundred  and  twenty  are  abortive 
and  fifteen  are  successfully  carried  into  execution. 
Well  may  Judge  Amidon  make  his  remark  about 
the  difficulty  of  convicting  the  guilty,  and  the  police 
get  weary  of  catching  birds  of  prey  only  to  see  them 
liberated  by  some  invisible  power  higher  up.  A 
key  of  gold  seems  to  unlock  even  the  murderer's 
cell.  Lawyers  and  judges  seem  more  bent  on  pre- 
serving the  forms  of  justice  than  on  administering 
justice  itself.  Justice  nine  times  out  of  ten  is  not  only 
fallen  in  the  street  but  kicked  into  the  gutter,  while 
legal  gentlemen  do  their  mental  gymnastics  and 
manifest  their  great  acumen  in  discovering  trifling 
spots  no  bigger  than  a  fly-speck  on  the  part  of  the 
prosecution,  to  the  wonder  and  compulsion  of  an 
:  dmiring  court,  which  thereupon  immediately 
grants  freedom  or  a  new  trial.  The  records  of 
the  courts  of  Alabama,  according  to  Mr.  Weir,  tell 
of  one  case  in  which  a  man  indicted  for  murder 
was  set  free  because  the  letter  "i"  in  the  word 
"malice"  was  left  out  in  the  indictment.  Another 
murderer  in  a  neighboring  state,  who  had  shot  his 
victim  in  the  heart,  was  set  free  because  the  clerk 
had  misspelled  the  word  "breast."  In  still  another 
state,  a  nev/  trial  was  granted  because  the  evidence 
was  presented  before  the  indictment,  instead  of 
vice  versa.  And  in  Seattle  a  man  in  whose  office 
a  set  of  teeth  was  found  and  who  had,  because  of 
this  and  other  clear  evidence,  been  convicted  of  the 
illegal  practice  of  dentistry,  was  granted  a  new 
trial  on  the  ground  that  the  indictment  did  not  state 
whether  the   teeth  were  artificial   or  natural. 

So  is  the  great  cause  of  Justice  bamboozled  and 
befuddled.  Justice  is  wounded  in  the  house  of  her 
friends.  She  is  bound  hand  and  foot  with  a  wilder- 
ness of  tape  in  which  the  very  lawyers  and  judges 
themselves  would  seem  to  have  gotten  all  tangled 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  33 

up  in  the  frayed-out  ends  till  their  mental  condi- 
tion would  appear  to  have  approximated  that  of 
the  good  old  minister  when  he  prayed,  "O  Lord, 
remember  thy  dust,  and  thy  dust's  dust,  and  thy 
dust's  dust's  dust." 

According-  to  our  present  jury  system,  none  but 
idiots  and  recluses  are,  theoretically  at  least,  elig- 
ible for  service.  If  they  have  formed  an  opinion 
they  are  not  competent  to  sit  on  the  case.  As  if 
a  man  could  escape  having  formed  some  kind  of 
opinion  regarding  the  crime  with  the  news  of  which 
his  whole  world  is  ringing,  or  as  if  it  were  impos- 
sible for  a  sane  man  to  change  his  opinion  on  the 
presentation  of  sufficient  evidence  to  the  contrary! 
Jury  challenging  has  reached  the  status  of  a  fine 
art  in  the  legal  profession,  and  long  after  the  time 
that  reparation  should  have  been  made  we  find 
the  legal  gladiators  fighting  over  the  men  who  are 
to  sit  on  the  case.  The  English  courts  tried,  sent- 
enced and  hanged  the  notorious  Dr.  Hawley  Crip- 
pen  in  less  time  than  it  would  have  taken  in 
America  to  empanel  his  jury. 

Such  delays  are  unnecessary  and  vicious  in  their 
reflex  influences.  They  encourage  crime  as  much 
as  delays  of  other  kinds  often  discourage  justice. 
It  is  no  uncommon  thing  for  cases  to  be  dropped 
or  dismissed  because  the  witnesses  on  the  case  have 
died  or  moved  away  while  waiting  for  the  cause 
to  be  tried.  The  Donnelly-McArdle  case  in  New 
York  dragged  on  for  twenty-three  years.  A  suc- 
cession of  forty  judges  sat  on  the  case,  of  whom 
sixteen  died  without  seeing  a  settlement,  as  also 
forty-two  of  the  witnesses.  Philadelphia  has  a  rec- 
ord of  two  hundred  fifty  cases  dropped  in  one  year 
for  that  reason  and  it  is  said  on  good  authority  that 
the  Court  of  Special  Sessions  of  New  York  had 
five  thousand  cases  awaiting  trial  at  one  time  and 


34  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

so  were  nearly  six  months  behind  with  their  work. 

The  other  extreme  of  over-working  the  courts 
might  at  the  same  time  be  seen  in  the  petty  courts 
of  New  York  City,  where  the  mills  of  Justice,  grind- 
ing steadily  with  day  and  night  shifts,  railroaded 
the  cases  through  with  an  average  of  six  minutes 
to  each.  Indeed,  the  unofficial  records  of  one  court 
tell  of  one  celebrated  night  in  which  the  unfortunates 
were  disposed  of  with  an  average  of  a  minute  to 
each,  or  one  hundred  cases  tried  and  adjudged  in 
one  hundred  minutes. 

Is  it  any  wonder  in  view  of  these  things  that 
there  should  be  manifested  some  disposition  on  the 
part  of  many  people  who  have  only  common  sense  and 
the  instinct  of  Justice  to  guide  them,  to  take  a  turn  at 
the  administration  of  the  law  for  themselves,  in 
order  to  be  real  sure  that  it  it  administered?  The 
wonder  is  rather  that  there  have  not  been  more  out- 
breaks of  the  kind.  Vigilance  committees  may 
make  mistakes,  but  they  can  hardly  have  made  more 
than  have  been  made  in  the  regular  court  pro- 
cedure, while  their  methods  have  been  vastly  more 
potent  as  a  deterrent  of  crime.  Judge  Lynch  is 
unknown  where  Justice  is  enthroned.  Great  Britain 
and  Canada  don't  know  what  he  looks  like,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  the  courts  protect.  No  one  there 
thinks  of  crime  going  unpunished,  once  it  is  proven, 
and  every  policeman  knows  that  every  power  the 
government  possesses  is  behind  him  in  the  execu- 
tion of  his  task  and  whether  the  chase  costs  a 
thousand  or  a  million  doesn't  really  matter;  the 
crime  has  to  be  dealt  with.  It  is  for  that  reason 
the  "bad"  men  of  our  mining  camps  become  good 
as  pie  on  crossing  the  international  boundary,  and 
because  of  that  a  handful  of  mounted  police  have 
for  years  been  able  to  maintain  order  over  a  terri- 
tory as  large  as  that  of  ten  countries  of  Europe. 


WHY.      THEY     FAIL  35 

Statistics  of  our  criminal  procedure  show  that  in 
1885  there  were  180S  murders  in  the  United  States, 
108  of  the  perpetrators  of  which  were  executed. 
Crime  then  advanced  by  steady  progression  far 
beyond  the  increase  in  population,  till  by  1904  the 
number  of  murders  had  grown  to  8482.  But  while 
6674  murderers  were  thus  added  to  the  list,  all 
but  eight  of  them  escaped  the  gallows.  Hence  the 
reversion  to  the  more  primitive  type  of  society — • 
where  justice  is  administered  by  the  tribe  with  scant 
attention  to  forms  and  processes;  and  hence  the 
spectacle  of  3337  lynchings  in  less  than  twenty 
years,  of  which  263?  were  of  white  men,  according 
to  Mr.  Weir,  and  the  balance  negroes.  And  this 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  pay  a  billion  and  a  half 
yearly  in  cold  cash  for  the  maintenance  of  order 
and  lose  an  additional  estimated  three  and  a  half  bil- 
lions through  the  withdrawal  of  the  army  of  justice 
from  productive  activity. 

Naturally  where  Justice  is  thrown  down  so  read- 
ily and  so  hard  in  the  legislatures  and  the  courts, 
the  interpretation  of  the  divorce  laws  becomes  very 
loose.  Of  course,  the  courts  do  not  make  the 
divorce  laws,  but  the  general  looseness  manifested  in 
legislation  and  jurisprudence  finds  expression  in  laws 
that  incline  to  laxity  in  morals  and  so  it  becomes 
easy  to  loose  "what  God  hath  joined  together." 
This  evil,  as  has  often  been  remarked,  strikes  at 
the  very  roots  of  our  civilization,  which  has  its 
centre  in  the  home,  and  its  rapid  growth  of  recent 
years  has  been  a  matter  for  grave  apprehension  on 
the  part  of  all  right-minded  people.  Heathen  Japan 
is  the  only  civilized  nation  in  the  world  which  is 
at  all  in  the  same  class  with  us  in  this  regard.  We 
are  by  demerit  raised  to  a  very  bad  eminence.  The 
United  States  statistical  summary  shows  945,625 
divorces  in  twenty  years   (1887-1906),  the  rate  of 


36  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

increase  over  the  previous  two  decades  being  nearly 
sixty-six  per  cent.  From  present  indications  within 
thirty-five  years  there  will  be  one  divorce  for  every 
marriage. 

The  rate  of  increase  in  divorce  as  compared  with 
the  increase  of  population  steadily  continued  till  in 
the  decade  between  1890-1900  divorce  had  popula- 
tion beaten  three  times  over.  The  sacred  tie  is 
dissolved  for  the  most  trivial  reasons,  and  at  least 
one  case  is  on  record  where  the  trial,  decree  and 
subsequent  remarriage  of  both  parties  was  put 
through  in  thirty  minutes.  In  Los  Angeles  and  else- 
where last  year  one  marriage  for  every  four  was 
invalidated. 

No  wonder  Mr.  Brooke  Adams  should  be  con- 
Strained  to  say  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly:  "Through 
divorce  modern  women  assert  and  practically  exer- 
cise the  right  of  living  with  what  men  they  please, 
as  long  as  they  please,  and  changing  when  they 
please,  repudiating  all  obligations  to  anyone  but 
themselves.  The  result  has  been  the  dissolution  of 
the  family  in  the  sense  that  parental  authority  has 
nearly  ceased  as  a  constraining  force  in  society. 
But  parental  authority  has  always  been  the  source 
of  all  authority  and  the  foundation  upon  which  has 
rested  the  sanction  of  all  coercive  law.  As  the 
instinct  of  obedience  is  weakened  by  the  decay  of 
parental  authority,  so  must  the  administration  of 
the  criminal  law  decay,  and  it  has  decayed." 

There  are  other  symptoms  which  would  also  indi- 
cate that  the  stream  of  our  national  life  is  not  so 
pure  as  it  might  be.  The  hard  nature  of  monopo- 
lies and  their  evident  disposition  to  over-reach  and 
under-pay  makes  truer  than  ever  Bobbie  Burns' 
sentiment  about  man's  inhumanity  to  man  making 
countless  thousands  mourn.  Of  course  we  should 
not  forget  that  these  capitalists  are  in  some  meas- 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  37 

lire  creatures  of  their  circumstances.  We  should 
not  visit  all  our  displeasure  upon  them,  since  back 
of  them  sits  a  board  of  directors,  and  a  horde  of 
stockholders  howling  for  dividends.  The  old  indi- 
vidual competition  of  the  cobbler  and  the  corner 
grocery  has  given  place  to  group  competition,  that 
is  all.  So  far  as  principle  and  intent  go,  the  new 
is  probably  not  a  whit  more  "red  in  tooth  and  claw" 
than  the  old,  but  whereas  the  multiplied  divisions 
of  the  old  favored  labor,  the  concentration  of  wit 
and  wealth  cripples  it  by  giving  almost  absolute 
power  to  capital.  The  laborer  has  become  simply 
a  tool  of  production,  to  be  cast  aside  for  the  slightest 
deficiency,  as  valuable  engines  go  to  the  scrap  heap 
immediately  on  the  appearance  of  a  better  one. 

While,  therefore,  some  sympathy  should  be 
shown  for  the  capitalist,  who,  as  surely  as  the  lab- 
orer, is  a  cog  in  a  wheel  driven  by  powers  beyond 
his  control,  the  most  lively  sympathy  should  be 
given  to  those  who  are  broken  on  the  wheel — who, 
even  when  they  toil  receive  no  adequate  recom- 
pense for  their  toil,  but  only  such  a  pittance  as 
will  keep  body  and  soul  together,  so  they  can  work 
some  more  for  the  good  of  corporations — corpora- 
tions already  grown  fat  upon  the  blood  and  brawn 
of  millions  made  in  the  image  of  God,  as  certainly 
as  were  the  directing  officers  of  those  corporations. 

The  supreme  peril  of  this  nation  lies  in  the  pres- 
ent rapid  and  vast  accumulation  of  capital  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  men.  The  world  has  never  seen  such 
a  spectacle  before.  Something  like  a  score  of  men 
absolutely  control  its  foreign  and  domestic  afifairs. 
This  oligarchy  is  now  entrenched  and  growing 
stronger  every  minute.  When  it  chooses  it  can 
precipitate  a  panic.  There  is  hardly  a  bank  or  a 
corporation  which  it  could  not  cripple  or  break, 
should  it  choose  to  turn  its  baleful  eye  upon  it.    It 


38  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

controls  the  transportation  of  this  country  and  the 
banks,  and   anything-  which  controls  those  two   fac- 
tors controls  the  nation.    The  bald  fact  is  that  we 
are  not  free.    We  are  simply  the  economic  servants 
of  a  small  group   of  men  whose  unprincipled  in- 
genuity in   subverting  legislators   and  courts,  has 
diverted  a  million   silver  rivulets  into  the  mighty 
current  which  now  turns  its   mighty  mill   wheels. 
Any  power  which  can  precipitate  a  panic  on  de- 
positors, merchants  and  manufacturers  without  re- 
gard to  natural  causes,  has  those  depositors,  mer- 
chants and   manufacturers,  and  those  whom  they 
employ,  under  its  thumb.  They  are  not  free.  And 
this  is  precisely  what  has  happened  to  us  in  this,  our 
day  of  boasted  freedom.     We  are  measurably  free 
only   as   long  as   it   is   the  pleasure   of   our  masters 
of  Wall  Street  to  allow  it.    One  act  of  insubordina- 
tion and  the  lash  is  drawn  for  the  fool's  back,  as 
it  was  in  the  year  of  grace  1903,  and  as  it  will  un- 
doubtedly   be    again.      The    Boston    seer,    Edward 
Bellamy,  saw  this  day  coming  more  than  twenty 
years   ago   and   foretold   what   would   happen — the 
final  revolt  of  a  people  goaded  to  desperation,  and 
their  violent  seizure  of  that  which  by  direct  fraud 
and  every  indirection,  had  through  the  years  been 
wrung  from  their  reluctant  hands.     Surely  it  is  the 
white  teeth  of  the  breakers  ahead  we  see  in  the  re- 
port of  the  Stanley  Committee,  showing  that  twenty- 
one  directors  and  officers  of  the  United  States  Steel 
Corporation  are  also  directors  in  213  other  corpora- 
tions of  which  the  total  capital,  surplus  and  funded 
debt  amounts  to  $15,208,487,325.     At  the  same  time 
the  total  amount  of  money  in  circulation  in  the  United 
States  is  only  $3,284,152,496,  with  $3,621,117,239  in 
the  Treasury. 

As  the  grinding  of  the  faces  of  the  poor  and  the 
dethronement  of  Justice  preceded  the  downfall  of 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  39 

ancient  Israel ;  as  the  accumulation  of  vast  wealth 
in  few  hands  and  its  attendant  vices  with  the  cor- 
responding depression  of  the  masses,  disintegrated 
the  mightiest  republics  of  antiquity,  so  must  the 
same  causes  now  operating  among  us  produce  like 
results.  Monkey  dinners  costing  thousands,  and 
eight  thousand  dollars  a  year  or  so  for  nurses,  dent- 
ists and  physicians  to  care  for  pug  dogs  while  a 
few  blocks  away  women  starve,  or  bear  the  pangs 
of  parturition  without  medical  aid  because  of  their 
dire  poverty;  feasts  that  eclipse  Belshazzar's  for 
splendor  and  orgies  that  shame  the  Bacchanals  for 
vice ;  shop  girls  who  are  forced  to  sell  their  virtue 
that  their  masters  may  keep  up  appearances  in  the 
fashionable  rout,  and  factory  men  who  sweat  and 
drink  the  bitter  waters  of  poverty,  and  die,  in  order 
that  their  master  may  build  for  himself  monuments 
in  cities  he  has  never  seen — all  these  things  offend 
high  Heaven  and  outrage  that  Divine  Charity  which 
regards  the  sparrow's  fall,  and  feels  for  that  con- 
summate flower  of  creation — man,  who  is  made  in 
the  image  of  God  and  born  to  a  destiny  surpassing 
that  of  archangels. 

The  rapid  accumulation  of  wealth  from  the  con- 
quest of  vast  natural  resources  and  the  pleasure 
and  power  manifestly  attending  its  possession,  have 
in  turn  served  to  obscure  the  higher  things  of  life. 
Mammon  is  by  far  the  most  popular  god  in 
America.  The  dollar  symbol  covers  all  stains,  opens 
all  doors,  atones  for  all  sins.  It  appears  to  be  the 
one  object  considered  worthy  of  most  feverish  pur- 
suit. No  matter  how  you  get  it — only  get  it.  That 
is  the  attitude,  if  not  the  cry.  The  evidence  of 
which  disposition  may  be  found  in  the  ease  with 
which  people  are  swindled  out  of  their  hard-earned 
ducats,  Post-Master  General  Hitchcock  tells  us 
that    innocents    have    been    swindled    out    of   one 


40  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

hundred  million  dollars  in  five  years  by  a  few 
crooks  who  made  fraudulent  use  of  the  mails.  Fifty 
millions  it  is  estimated,  was  lost  during  the  same 
time  in  bucket  shop  gambling,  while  even  those  last 
citadels  of  integrit}^  the  banks  and  trust  companies, 
were  not  immune,  losing  a  matter  of  twenty-eight 
million  dollars  in  the  same  time  at  the  hands  of 
dishonest  employees.  One  railway  company  proposes 
to  let  the  public  go  unwashed  hereafter  because  the 
dear  people  stole  $31,000.00  worth  of  towels  from 
their  trains  last  year. 

This  gold  itch  reveals  itself  in  other  inconvenient 
ways.  It  has  poisoned  our  food  and  slain  more 
babies  than  Herod's  sword.  Stock  gambling  ap- 
peals to  something  more  than  greed;  it  appeals  to 
the  gambling  instinct  within  us,  for  we  all  have 
got  enough  of  the  gambler  in  us  to  make  us  want 
to  take  chances  on  this  or  that,  in  one  way  or  an- 
other; but  the  deliberate  adulteration  and  poisoning 
of  the  people's  food  is  a  cold-blooded  villainy  which 
should  have  had  short  shrift  at  the  hands  of  the 
law's  officers.  It  has  not  received  its  due  reward. 
Our  moral  executive  is  as  yet  too  weak  for  that ; 
but  we  have  at  any  rate  scotched  the  tail  of  the 
fiend,  thanks  to  men  like  Senator  McCumber  and 
Dr.  Wiley,  of  pure  food  fame. 

Some  years  ago,  when  the  dust  was  raised  about 
this  iniquity,  the  Secretary  of  Agriculture  affirmed 
that  thirty  per  cent  of  the  money  paid  for  food  prod- 
ucts in  the  United  States  was  paid  for  adulterated 
or  misbranded  goods.  Bad  enough,  that,  especially 
when  Senator  McCumber  could  say  on  the  floor  of 
the  House  that  if  the  per  cent  were  cut  to  fifteen  in 
order  to  be  sure  to  be  on  the  safe  side,  the  amount 
of  that  swindle  would  be  about  one  billion,  seven 
hundred  and  fifty  million  dollars.  Stock  gambling  and 
post  office  swindles  anu  bank  defalcations  all  put 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  41 

together  look  small  alongside  of  that,  don't  they? 
But  when  we  remember  that  a  portion  of  it  went  to 
pay  for  formaldehyde  in  the  milk  doled  out  to  sick 
babies,  the  heart  recoils  from  the  cold  rapacity  of 
the  game.  Alcohol  in  medicines,  powdered  soap 
stone  for  flour,  coal-tar  and  benzoic  acid  for  fruit 
flavors  are  crooked  enough  and  odious  enough,  but 
men  who  could  poison  the  food  of  a  helpless  infant 
with  formaldehyde,  in  which  farmers  kill  rust,  fungi 
and  other  pests  on  their  wheat,  are  real  Herods  of 
the  Twentieth  Century  who  might  well  be  con- 
ceived of  as  uttering  in  earnest  the  jesting  reply  of 
the  genial  Charles  Lamb,  bachelor,  when  a  lady  asked 
him  how  he  liked  babies — "B-b-boiled,  madam."  ^ 

The  lack  of  honesty  and  manliness  shows  even  in 
our  sports,  where  presumably  those  qualities  are 
at  a  premium.  For  instance  in  the  brutal  exhibition 
of  human  skill  and  animal  prowess  which  had  place 
at  Reno,  Nevada,  in  1910,  between  Johnson,  the 
black  pugilist,  and  Jeffries,  "the  white  man's  hope," 
a  spirit  which  was  anything  but  fair  was  manifested. 
The  management  itself  feared  the  crowd  it  had 
evoked.  This  was  evidenced  by  the  array  of  special 
constables  armed  with  rifles,  who  stood  near  the 
ring,  and  by  the  further  fact  that  every  spectator 
was  relieved  of  his  weapons  before  entering  the 
theatre  of  strife.  If  honesty  and  manliness  are 
prominent  among  our  virtues,  how  does  it  come  that 
a  negro  who  showed  no  fear  and  asked  no  favors 
had  to  be  so  amply  protected  during  a  struggle  in 
which  he  stood  all  but  alone?  And  why,  immedi- 
ately on  the  awarding  to  him  of  the  palm  of  victory 
so  fairly  won,  should  he  have  to  be  bundled  out  of 
the  building  and  out  of  the  town  as  if  he  were  the 
vilest  of  criminals?  And  why  should  it  be  that 
while  the  people  of  his  race,  according  to  their 
light,   were   praying  for  their  national   champion, 


43  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

mobs  of  white  men  should  be  hounding  them  with 
savage  impulses,  killing  half  a  dozen  and  wound- 
ing hundreds  who  had  probably  never  in  their 
lives  either  harmed  a  white  man  or  even  laid  eyes 
on  "Mistah  Johnsing?" 

It  may  be  said  that  this  illustration  is  unfortunate 
since  it  is  drawn  from  an  affair  which  does  not  truly 
represent  American  sentiment.  That  is  true,  for 
which  praise  be !  We  may  not  be  all  we  ought  to  be 
but  thank  God  we  have  our  limits,  and  they  fall 
this  side  of  Reno,  Nevada.  But  unhappily  the 
blight  of  unfairness  appears  to  have  touched  other 
and  fairer  flowers  of  our  society.  Let  us  rise  from 
the  fetid  air  of  the  prize-ring  with  its  odor  of  beer 
and  mark  of  the  beast.  Let  us  hasten  to  the  dec- 
orous East,  home  of  the  fine  arts,  beauty,  brains 
and  chivalrous  culture.  Let  us  take  an  illustration 
from  thence.  This  time  it  is  the  sport  of  kings — 
aviation.  And  what  may  we  reasonably  expect  to 
find  there?  Surely  high  courtesy,  a  disposition  to 
yield  the  advantage,  if  there  be  any,  to  the  foe,  a 
generous  hospitality,  especially  to  the  stranger 
within  the  gates.  Were  these  hall-marks  of  honesty 
and  manliness  in  sport  found  there?  If  they  were 
why  should  a  prominent  American  millionaire  mem- 
ber of  the  Aero  Club,  himself  an  aviator  of  no  mean 
repute  and  therefore  familiar  with  all  the  rules  of 
the  game,  rise  up  to  protest  against  unfairness  to 
the  British  aviator  and  ask  to  be  permitted  to  with- 
draw his  membership  on  the  ground  of  an  alleged 
breach  of  honorable  dealing? 

Or  again,  take  the  horse  show.  If  there  is  one 
form  of  sport  which  more  than  another  may  be 
deemed  both  clean  and  fashionable  it  is  the  horse 
show  of  our  great  cities.  No  other  function  seems 
to  attract  such  crowds  of  our  most  representative 
citizenship  day  after  day.    Once  again  we  deal  with 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  43 

the  diversion  of  kings.  This  is  no  play  of  irrespons- 
ible boys,  but  the  genuine  avocation  of  people  of 
high  standing.  Hundreds  of  millions  of  wealth  one 
might  say,  attend  the  annual  sessions  of  the  New 
York  Horse  Show,  and  millionaires  of  national 
reputation  are  not  ashamed  to  act  as  judges  of  the 
magnificent  animals  presented  to  their  discriminat- 
ing eyes. 

This  is  not  a  horse  race,  mark  you.  One  would 
expect  to  meet  charges  of  unfairness  there.  This 
is  merely  a  gentleman's  exhibition  of  fine  horses, 
fine  horsemanship  and,  in  a  small  degree,  fine  equi- 
pages. Surely  there  at  least,  will  be  no  question  as 
to  the  integrity  of  the  awards  made,  however  the 
judgment  of  the  judges  may  be  doubted.  But  alas, 
it  is  not  so.  In  a  certain  Horse  Show  for  1910 
the  Canadian  contingent  was  conspicuous  by  its 
absence,  though  competent  judges  think  their 
horses  fit  for  any  ring,  and  more  than  fit  for  the  one 
from  which  they  excused  themselves.  They  felt  they 
didn't  get  a  square  deal  and  wouldn't  come  back. 
In  another  and  smaller  city  the  whole  institution 
went  to  the  wall  after  flourishing  for  a  time,  be- 
cause of  the  withdrawals  of  those  who  felt  they 
had  received  the  double  cross ;  and  in  still  others 
there  is  trouble  brewing. 

It  is  to  be  expected  that  not  all  will  be  satisfied 
with  the  awards  made.  That  is  so  in  almost  every 
competition ;  but  where  gentlemen  who  are  men  of 
affairs  are  concerned  one  must  infer  from  the  talk 
that  there  is  either  a  want  of  fair  dealing  on  the 
one  hand,  or  on  the  other  a  lack  of  that  quality 
in  a  man  which  enables  him  to  take  his  lemon  and 
suck  it  in  silence. 

Finally,  if  we  consider  that  highest  efflorescence 
of  the  nation's  life,  the  part  of  it  which  is  supposed 
to  express  itself  through  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ, 


44  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

we  find  that  even  there,  there  is  apparently  a  failure  to 
measure  up  to  the  demands  of  the  day  and  the  op- 
portunity. Time  was  when  the  church  was  the 
theatre  of  the  world's  great  drama.  She  dispensed 
its  charities,  shaped  its  laws,  restrained  brute  force 
in  its  oppression  of  the  weak ;  sheltered  the  innocent 
(likewise  the  guilty  sometimes)  and  was  the  con- 
servator and  patron  of  literature  and  art.  She  can- 
not be  accused  of  having  ever  coddled  science,  but 
if  not,  she  was  at  any  rate  sufficiently  influential  to 
make  science  feel  the  weight  of  her  hand. 

To-day  she  seems  bereft  of  these  ancient  preroga- 
tives. The  tide  of  the  world's  affairs  seems  to  pour 
around  her  demesne  rather  than  through  it.  She 
finds  herself  marooned — left  like  a  beacon  on  a  hill 
or  a  stump  in  a  forest  of  saplings.  She  no  longer 
holds  in  leash  the  dogs  of  war;  no  longer  dic- 
tates terms  to  princes,  peers  and  statesmen;  no 
longer  can  she  protect  the  weak  and  innocent  or 
shelter  the  guilty;  no  longer  does  literature  care 
what  she  thinks,  good  or  ill;  science  is  at  open  odds 
with  her;  public  charities  are  dispensed  by  aliens, 
or  in  any  event  without  leave  asked  of  her,  and  the 
social  life  has  shifted  from  the  shadow  of  the  church 
steeple  to  the  busy  marts  of  men. 

Is  there  a  holy  war  to  be  waged  on  the 
infamous  liquor  traffic,  then  a  legion  of  temper- 
ance societies  is  organized  to  do  it;  is  vice  to  be 
challenged  in  its  urban  citadels,  a  Moral  Reform 
Association  will  lead  the  charge;  does  the  hideous 
and  malodorous  ulcer  of  a  white  slave  traffic  break 
out  upon  the  body  politic,  then  a  lawyer  will  rise 
up  to  treat  it  with  his  mundane  caustic ;  are  young 
men  homeless  and  friendless  in  the  strange  city, 
then  a  Y.  M.  C  A.  will  take  care  of  them  and 
find  a  place  for  them  as  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  looks 
after  their  sisters ;  is   woman  to  be   granted   her 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  46 

standing  by  the  side  of  man,  society  leaders  will 
look  after  that ;  is  the  brother  stricken  down  sud- 
denly, then  he  is  glad,  since  he  has  a  wife  and 
babies  to  be  cared  for  at  home,  that  he  belongs  to 
a  Masons,'  Oddfellows,'  or  any  of  a  dozen  other 
fraternal  organizations,  at  whose  hearth  he  has 
often  warmed  his  soul.  When  the  lodge  by  its  in- 
surance fund  and  sick  benefits  has  cared  for  his  im- 
mediate needs  and  enabled  him  to  square  away  his 
obligations  and  discharge  his  responsibilities  as  a 
man,  then  he  is  ready  for  the  priest  and  the  look  into 
the  beyond.  Is  there  a  huge  injustice  being  done  to 
some  of  the  humbler  and  hard-working  citizens  of 
the  town,  atrocious  hours,  unsanitary  conditions 
about  home  or  workshop,  starvation  wages,  or  other 
limitation  of  natural  rights,  the  Labor  Union,  not 
the  Church,  will  take  the  matter  up  and  deal  with 
it  till  justice  is  done. 

Naturally  the  laborer  comes  to  look  to  his  Union 
for  his  temporal  salvation,  that  being  a  matter 
both  urgent  and  near  at  hand,  and  naturally  there  is 
a  tendency  to  bless  the  hand  that  feeds  him  and 
to  forget  the  institution  whose  members  forgot  him 
in  the  hour  of  his  need,  when  he  stood  before  the 
legislature,  city  council  or  board  of  arbitration. 

And  so  it  comes  that  the  laboring  man,  and  many 
other  men,  have  drifted  away  from  the  church  and 
have  come  to  look  upon  it  somewhat  as  though  it 
were  simply  an  improved  and  animated  prayer 
wheel,  of  no  practical  value,  and  of  interest  only  to 
those  peculiar  people  who  care  for  the  odd,  the 
antiquated  and  the  esoteric. 

Rev.  Charles  Stelzle,  who  has  done  such  mag- 
nificent work  for  the  Presbyterian  body,  and  in- 
directly for  the  Church  at  large,  in  the  way  of  lead- 
ing us  to  a  better  understanding  of  the  working- 
man's  attitude  and  just  grievances,  tells   us  that 


46  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

workingmen  are  alienated  from  the  Church  because 

(1)  having  fought  for  and  won  religious  and  politi- 
cal democracy,  they  are  now  fighting  for  industrial 
democracy  and  get  no  help  from  the  Church.  It 
even  opposes  ameliorating  laws  as  in  England, 
where  Churchmen  voted  for  the  saloon,  and  in  New 
York  against  the  better  housing  of  the  poor,  be- 
cause the   church  had  vile  tenements  of  its  own ; 

(2)  because  the  Church  is  the  tool  of  the  rich  man ; 

(3)  "because  the  preacher  lives  in  the  clouds  and 
has  not  enough  of  the  man-to-man  message  style 
about  him,  as  have  labor  leaders.  He  is  more  con- 
cerned with  Jerusalem  and  Abraham  than  Chicago 
and  the  Polaks  there,"  and  (4)  because  "the  Church 
denounces  labor  unions  while  at  the  same  time  it  is 
the  closest  kind  of  a  corporation  itself,  in  other 
days  persecuting  all  ecclesiastical  scabs  who  did 
not  belong  to  it." 

If  we  disentangle  from  the  skein  of  this  general 
statement  the  discolored,  broken  threads — the  half 
truths  blown  in  in  the  breadth  of  a  tremendous  indig- 
nation and  conviction — such  threads  for  example 
as  that  about  the  Church  being  "the  closest  kind 
of  corporation"  (as  if  in  the  nature  of  things,  the 
initiative  requirement  being  a  new  birth  from  above, 
it  could  be  anything  else)  or  that  other  general 
statement  about  owning  tenements  and  opposing 
ameliorating  laws  (where  only  a  part  of  the  Church 
did  so)  we  still  have  left  a  strange  fabric — one  that 
is  far  different  from  the  pure  white  linen  of  the 
saints  which  the  Church  is  supposed  to  be  wearing. 

That  the  Church  has  lost  her  mediaeval  grip  on 
legislation,  education,  social  life,  benevolence,  war 
and  politics  is  not  the  cause  for  tears;  the  cause  for 
tears  is  that  she  has  lost  her  grip  because  she  could 
not  sufficiently  adjust  herself  in  spirit  to  changed 
conditions.     War,    politics,    education,    legislation. 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  47 

economics  and  all  that  kind  of  thing  is  not  the  busi- 
ness of  the  Church.  Her  business  is  to  help  make 
men ;  to  help  make  them  over  again,  under  God,  in 
the  name  of  God  into  the  image  of  God.  This  is  at 
bottom  a  spiritual  operation  and  a  heavenly  task. 
And  if  she  only  attends  to  her  own  proper  business 
of  making  men  over  in  the  image  of  God,  by  the 
spirit  of  God,  with  all  her  might,  war,  politics,  legis- 
lation, education,  and  social  reform  will  take  care 
of  themselves.  For  the  Church  is  like  a  medical 
school,  which,  though  it  does  not  treat  human  dis- 
eases yet  turns  out  the  men  who  do.  Her  sons  will 
have  light  enough  and  influence  enough  to  see  to 
that  out  in  the  world.  They  will  be  the  leaven  that 
will  leaven  the  lump,  the  grain  of  mustard  seed 
which  becomes  a  great  tree  into  which  the  weary, 
panting  birds  of  the  air  will  flock  for  shelter  from 
the  burning  heat  of  the  day. 

Infinite  trouble  and  infinite  loss  have  been  our 
portion  because  of  our  failure  to  distinguish  ade- 
quately between  the  Church's  influence  and  the 
Church  as  an  organization.  The  Church  as  an  or- 
ganization has  no  business  with  war,  politics,  litera- 
ture and  art.  As  an  institution  she  is  no  more  of 
this  world  than  her  founder  was.  Her  citizenship 
is  in  Heaven  and  her  business  is  to  keep  on  telling 
everywhere  the  good  news  contained  in  John  3  :16, 
and  then  to  perfect  holiness  in  the  fear  of  God  in  her 
members  according  to  the  rules  laid  down  in  the 
Guide  Book.  That  is  her  sole  business;  but  if  she 
does  that  faithfully,  the  influence  of  the  Church 
will  soon  become  a  terrific  force  for  righteousness, 
an  influence  in  public  life  which  can  neither  be 
ignored  nor  despised.  The  only  way  the  Church 
can  rule  or  should  want  to  rule  in  the  affairs  of  this 
world  is  indirectly,  by  her  influence  over  the  lives 
and  consciences  of  men. 


48  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

If  the  Church  will  only  develop  the  right  kind 
of  men  in  her  own  organization,  everything  else 
will  come  right  of  itself.  A  Church  composed  of 
men  and  women  who  have  not  only  the  will,  but  the 
power  to  do  right,  will  be  indeed  "fair  as  the  moon, 
clear  as  the  sun,  and  terrible  as  an  army  with 
banners."  And  a  Church  like  that  will  compel  the 
admiration,  reverence  and  respect  of  the  world. 

But  the  trouble  is  her  sons  are  so  often  just  like 
other  men.  They  are  Samsons  shorn  of  their  power ; 
inconsistent  Lots  whose  words  have  lost  their  in- 
fluence ;  Christians  who  have  lost  their  savor,  and 
are   therefore   fit  only   to  be   cast  out   and   trodden 
under  foot  of  men,  as  the  Master  long  ago  told  us. 
If    the    Christian    brother,     who    through     cupidity 
takes  a  bribe,  or  for  lack  of  Christian   manliness 
fails  to  stand  up  and  speak  out,  and  so  becomes  in 
some  shady  transaction  the  silent  partner  of  men 
who  make  no  pretence  of  religion — if  he  could  only 
see  their  sneers  behind  his  back,  he  would  have  a 
new  and  lively  appreciation  of  the  Saviour's  insight. 
He  would  see  them,  hardened  sons  of  Belial  though 
they  might  be,  in  a  very  real  sense  if  not  a  literal 
one,  wiping  their  feet  on  him,  thanking  God  that 
however  low  they  might  have  sunk,  they  hadn't  yet 
sunk  that  low — so  low  as  to  be  religious  hypocrites. 
It  is  not  without  pain   we   have  to  admit  that  the 
Church  of  to-day  fails  to  inspire  that  measure  of 
respect  which  in  other  days,  superstition  aside,  she 
was   wont   to   be   accorded,   and   that   we   see   the 
crowds  swinging  down  other  streets  and  away  from  her 
doors.     Not  so  many  strong  men  are  disposed  to 
enter  her  ministry,  and  not  so  many  men  of  any 
kind  crowd  her  gates  on  Sunday  morning  or  even- 
ing as  should  be  there.    Harsh  things  are  said  about 
her  by  those  whom  she  is  supposed  to  reach,  and 
above  all,   in   politics,   civic   life,   commercial    Hfe, 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  49 

sports  and  the  courts,  such  enemies  have  crept  in 
as  to  force  the  conviction  that  to  have  allowed  it 
to  happen,  with  all  her  far-flung  outposts,  strons^ly 
entrenched  centres  and  lines  of  battle  innumerable, 
her  sentries  must  either  have  been  asleep  at  their 
posts,  or  else  her  commanding  officers  must  have  over- 
looked some  very  important,  not  to  say  strategic  posi- 
tion. 

"Facts  are  the  fingers  of  God,"  and  "Truth  is 
truth  if  it  sears  our  eye-balls."  We  have  to  look 
at  and  deal  with  things  as  they  are.  Yet  no  one 
who  thinks  at  all  will  be  so  silly  as  to  think  for 
all  this,  that  the  Church  is  either  a  doubtful  insti- 
tution or  a  decrepit  and  negligible  quantity  so  far 
as  the  every-day  life  of  the  people  is  concerned. 
Far  from  it.  If  things  are  as  tainted  as  they  are 
in  spots,  what  would  they  have  been  like  if  there 
had  been  no  Church?  Let  no  man  think  that  every- 
thing is  going  to  the  bow-wows.  The  heart  of 
the  various  trees  in  the  garden  is  reasonably  sound, 
if  they  do  appear  to  be  dying  at  the  top.  Not  all 
churches  or  church  members  are  objects  of  re- 
proach. There  are  still  to  be  found  Drexels  in  every 
form  of  sport,  who  are  able  to  rise  up  in  protest 
against  what  they  deem  unfairness  or  meanness. 
We  have  still  our  Bryans,  Roosevelts,  Folks, 
La  Follettes,  and  a  growing  army  of  insurgents  in 
politics ;  our  Gaynors,  Pingrees,  Weavers  and 
Joneses  in  every  city  to  cry  out  for  good  govern- 
ment; a  healthy  disposition  toward  being  more  "on 
the  square"  in  commercial  transactions  and  a  great 
body  of  sentiment  leaning  always  decidedly  toward 
better  things. 

The  point  is,  not  that  we  have  no  right  sentiment 
no  honesty,  no  manliness,  no  justice,  but  that  we 
haven't  got  enough  of  it  to  go  around ;  that  a  small 
proportion  even  of  those  who  have  had  a  chance, 


60  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

are  conspicuous  for  such  homely  and  necessary  vir- 
tues as  honesty,  manHness,  and  beneficence,  say 
twenty-five  per  cent,  while  seventy-five  per  cent 
come  short;  and  that  there  must  therefore  have 
been  some  very  grave  leak  somewhere,  in  our  edu- 
cational systems,  particularly  in  the  methods  of  the 
Church  whose  peculiar  function  it  is  to  develop 
morally  efificient  character,  when,  with  all  her  years 
of  painstaking,  prayerful,  conscientions  efifort  in 
training,  supplemented  by  that  of  the  home,  the 
day-school  and  the  denominational  college,  she 
turns  out  a  moral  product  which  goes  down  like  a 
tenpin  in  the  very  first  horse  trade,  real  estate  deal, 
or  party  mix-up  in  which  the  dear  graduate  pupil 
finds  himself  involved. 


WHY.  '   THEY.     FAIL  51 


FOREWORD  TO  CHAPTER  II 

"If  it  were  possible  to  sum  up  in  a  few  words 
the  one  thing  that  has  most  impressed  me  in  visit- 
ing churches  and  talking  with  church  leaders  in 
various  parts  of  the  country,  I  think  1  should  say, 

"  'The  utter  confusion  of  counsel  among  church 
leaders  themselves.' 

"Upon  the  seriousness  of  the  crisis  which  con- 
fronts them — the  waning  influence  of  the  Church 
upon  the  lives  of  men  and  women,  the  tendency  of 
able  young  men  to  avoid  the  ministry  as  a  pro- 
fession— most  leaders  are  quite  in  agreement,  but 
as  to  what  to  do  about  it  there  exist  the  widest 
differences  of  opinion.  The  Church  to-day  is  like 
a  fort  under  sudden  attack — in  the  night,  with  many 
of  the  captains  fast  asleep.  There  is  a  common 
and  overwhelming  sense  of  danger,  but  the  defense 
so  far  has  been  without  common  plan  or  purpose — 
sallies  here,  retreats  there,  a  promiscuous  firing  of 
big  and  little  guns,  and  an  altogether  inordinate 
amount  of  noise." 

— Ray  Stannard  Baker,  Journalist,  in  The  American 
Magazine. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  CONFUSION  OF  TONGUES 

If,  now,  we  enquire  why  these  things  are  so,  a 
multitude  of  voices  is  at  once  heard  in  reply.  The 
explanations  offered  are  many,  varied,  interesting 
and  sincere,  but  they  do  not  go  deep  enough.     They 


m  WHY.      THEY     FAIL 

do  not  find  the  tap  root  of  the  evil  and  drag  it  out 
clearly  into  the  light.  The  diagnoses  and  prescrip- 
tions for  the  most  part  are  not  unrelated  to  the 
plant  but  they  concern  chiefly  the  upward,  outward 
and  visible — the  bole,  stems,  leaves  and  branches 
above  ground,  while  the  real  trouble,  the  prolific 
mother  of  ills,  lurks,  unsuspected  under  ground. 

Let  us  take  for  illustration  some  of  the  diagnoses 
and  prescriptions  which  have  been  made  in  regard 
to  the  ills  which  aftiict  the  Church,  and  through 
the  Church,  society  at  large,  for  woe  to  the  land  in 
which  the  temples  are  polluted  or  deserted,  any 
kind  of  god  being  better  than  no  god  at  all,  as  the 
philosophers  of  Rome  long  ago  pointed  out. 

It  is  a  hopeful  sign  that  so  many  thoughtful  men 
are  aware  that  something  is  wrong  somewhere. 
That  this  is  the  case  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that 
the  so-called  secular  press  has  found  it  worth  while 
to  give  serious  attention  to  the  matter.  Among 
others  The  Delineator,  a  leading  journal  of  fashion, 
took  the  matter  up  two  years  ago  or  more  in  a 
careful,  frank,  and,  so  far  as  the  scope  of  its  inter- 
ests allowed,  a  reasonably  scientific  fashion.  In- 
stead of  giving  forth  any  half-baked,  or  even  well- 
prepared  personal  opinion  on  the  situation,  the 
editor  wrote  a  frank,  manly  letter  to  a  number  of 
ministers  who  are  particularly  prominent  in  the 
religious  life  of  America,  and  asked  them  to  con- 
tribute a  brief  article  on  the  theme,  "What's  the 
Matter  with  the  Churches?" 

Such  a  symposium  may  naturally  be  expected  to 
carry  more  weight  with  it  than  if  the  editor  had  en- 
deavored to  settle  the  matter  by  his  ipse  dixit. 
When  an  editor  gets  seriously  ill  with  neuritis  he 
does  not  call  on  a  blacksmith  or  an  electrician  to 
treat  him,  however  skilful  or  distinguished  they 
may  be  along  their  own  lines.    He  calls  for  a  nerve 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  53 

specialist,  and  if  by  any  chance,  being  merely  an 
unworldly-minded  editor,  whose  business  is  to  keep 
the  crowd  straight  by  telling  them  what  to  do,  he 
has  enough  hard  cash  by  him  to  secure  a  consultation 
of  leading  nerve  specialists,  he  feels,  editor  though 
he  may  be,  that  what  they  tell  him  is  something 
he  will  do  well  to  receive,  mark  and  inwardly  digest. 
His  reason  for  thinking  this  is  that  if  they  have 
given  twenty  or  thirty  years  of  their  lives  to  the  study 
of  the  nervous  system  they  are  likely  to  know  more 
about  what  ails  him  than  he  is ;  but  when  it  comes 
to  harpooning  a  senator,  or  to  impaling  a  crooked 
congressman  on  a  verbal  spear  point,  the  editor 
will  then  explain  the  rules  of  the  game  while  the 
honorable  medical  gentlemen  sit  where  he  so  mod- 
estly sat  awhile  before — on  the  learner's  stool. 

Now^  the  men  to  whom  the  editor  of  The  Deline- 
ator appealed  for  an  opinion  are  specialists  in  their 
line.  They  are  "sun-crowned"  leaders  in  the  vari- 
ous denominations  to  which  they  belong,  thought- 
ful, erudite,  experienced.  Moreover  they  were  given 
the  greater  part  of  a  year  in  which  to  formulate 
their  views  on  the  important  matter  under  consid- 
eration. It  may  be  taken  for  granted  therefore,  that 
what  they  had  to  say  they  said  in  all  seriousness — 
as  indeed  they  did.  No  one  who  reads  their  words 
in  The  Delineator  (October  to  December,  1909)  can 
for  a  moment  doubt  their  deep  heart-interest  in  the 
matter  they  discuss.  They  are  concerned  for  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  as  they  stand  with  fingers  on 
the  pulse  of  the  situation,  this  is  what  in  effect 
they  have  to  say  as  to  "What's  the  Matter  with  the 
Churches?" 

Dr.  Charles  H.  Parkhurst,  the  well-known  divine 
of  New  York,  says:  "(1)  There  is  an  unwarranted 
and  embarrassing  sharpness  of  discrimination  be- 
tween the  functions  of  the  clergy  and  that  of  the 


54  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

laity.  (2)  There  is  a  large  element  that  properly 
belongs  inside  of  the  Church,  and  that  would  be 
a  very  positive  increment  of  strength  to  it,  but  that 
remains  outside  for  the  reason  that  the  Church  has 
allowed  the  opinion  to  prevail  that  membership 
must  be  conditioned  upon  the  possession  of  a  certain 
amount  of  moral  attainment.  (3)  The  failure  to 
hold  the  theological  views  of  the  generality  of 
Church  membership.  Doctrinal  formulas  count 
very  much  less  with  Christians  than  formerly.  Men 
who  think  carefully  and  feel  deeply  discriminate 
much  more  sharply  than  formerly  between  theology 
and  religion,  between  the  part  the  intellect  plays 
and  the  part  the  heart  plays  and  will  play  in 
Christianity." 

Dr.  Josiah  Strong,  who  is  something  of  an  author- 
ity on  social  matters  as  they  effect  the  Church,  adds 
another  word  of  wisdom.  He  says:  "Omitting 
Roman  Catholic  statistics,  which  are  made  up  on 
an  entirely  different  basis  from  the  others,  the 
gains  of  all  other  denominations  during  the  past 
nine  years  (1900-1909)  have  been  as  follows:  In 
ministers,  5  per  cent;  in  churches,  12.9  per  cent, 
and  in  members  10.4  per  cent.  That  is,  the  growth 
of  Church  membership  has  been  less  than  two-thirds 
as  rapid  as  that  of  the  population  and  this  notwith- 
standing the  exceptional  evangelistic  effort.  This 
would  seem  to  be  conclusive  that  something  ails 
the  Church.  What  is  it?  He  points  out  that  the 
same  general  conditions  obtain  in  Europe,  that 
Churches  gained  decidedly  on  population  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  most  of  it  made  in  the  first 
half,  and  goes  on  to  say,  "The  rate  of  gain  has 
been  steadily  falling  since  1850,  and  in  1900  it  had 
practically  reached  the  vanishing  point.  During  the 
past  nine  years  it  has  fallen  behind  the  population. 

"During  the  first  half  of  the  century  an  indi- 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  55 

vidualistic  religion  was  adapted  to  an  individualistic 
civilization  and  in  proportion  made  rapid  growth. 
During  the  last  half  there  was  a  marked  develop- 
ment of  the  social  spirit  which  increasingly  checked 
the  growth  of  the  individualistic  churches,  because 
they  did  not  meet  the  needs  of  the  new  conditions. 
What  ails  the  churches  is  that  they  have  failed  to 
recognize  the  social  side  of  their  mission.  Churches 
here  and  there  have  gained  the  social  spirit  and 
have  made  a  surprising  groivth,  attracting  men  es- 
pecially." 

Dr.  Len.  G.  Broughton,  of  Atlanta,  Ga.,  is  one  of 
the  most  widely-known  and  successful  Baptist  min- 
isters in  America.  In  his  contribution  he  says : 
"The  main  deficiency,  as  I  see  it,  is  in  its  faith ; 
which  is  the  result  of  ignorance  of  the  Bible.  This 
is  particularly  true  of  America.  The  Bible  as  a 
whole  is  not  studied.  The  preachers  themselves 
do  not  study  it.  What  we  want  is  men  in  the  pulpit 
who  know  the  Bible ;  not  simply  texts  from  the 
Bible,  not  simply  the  ability  to  quote  accurately 
passage  after  passage,  but  men  who  know  the  Bible 
as  a  whole  and  are  able  to  teach  it  in  this  way. 
There  will  have  to  be  a  change  in  the  method  of 
teaching.  We  have  been  too  anxious  to  teach  all 
about  the  Bible  and  neglected  the  teaching  of  the 
Bible  itself.  .  .  .  The  Church  also  lacks  in  ap- 
plication. It  will  never  command  the  respect  of 
the  world  until  it  is  keyed  so  as  to  respond  to  every 
human  need.  At  present  it  consents  for  temporal 
needs  to  be  supplied  by  outside  agencies,  agencies 
that  name  no  religion,  that  have  no  Christ,  and 
yet  agencies  which  could  not  live  but  for  the  in- 
fluence of  Christianity.  The  Church  must  do  such 
work  for  itself.  It  cannot  preach  sympathy  and 
friendship  and  then  fold  its  arms  and  stand  back, 
waiting  for  some  other  organization  to  bring  the 


56  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

supply.  It  must  provide  as  far  as  possible  to  meet 
every  condition  of  need.  This  must  be  done  in  the 
name  of  Christ.  .  .  .  Many  men  of  brains  shun 
the  pulpit  because  they  are  unwilling  to  be  shut  out 
from  an  active  business  life.  Let  the  Church  direct 
its  affairs  as  it  should  and  there  will  be  the  greatest 
opportunity  for  the  expression  of  brains  and  talents. 
The  local  Church,  especially  in  our  cities,  must  do 
this  work  as  far  as  possible." 

Gipsy  Smith,  the  noted  evangelist,  who  has  come 
into  touch  with  more  churches  than  most  pastors, 
would  suggest  a  general  house-cleaning  in  the 
churches.  He  speaks  out  like  a  man  and  presents 
some  plain  facts  for  plain  people  as  follows :  "The 
Church  to-day  instead  of  being  a  place  where  every- 
body has  the  spirit  and  power  to  seek  and  to  save 
that  which  was  lost,  is  more  of  a  mutual  congratula- 
tion society  where  we  fuss  and  fondle  those  we  have 
already  found.  We  have  culture  and  refinement 
and  organization,  art,  music,  position  and  money, 
but  we  have  lost  touch  with  the  common  people, 
and  are  losing  the  common  people,  who  are  the 
coming  people,  and  we  have  lost  our  grip  on  God. 
I  know  churches  so-called,  where  if  Christ  himself 
came  to  preach,  there  would  be  nothing  done  until 
the  atmosphere  and  the  conditions  changed,  and 
there  are  churches  where  Jesus  himself  would  not 
be  wanted  if  he  came  as  a  preacher ;  the  fact  is 
we  are  playing  at  church." 

Dr.  Emil  G.  Hirsch,  Rabbi  of  the  Sinai  Congre- 
gation in  Chicago,  called  on  for  his  opinion,  finds 
the  trouble  to  be  in  natural  history  and  science  de- 
veloping the  ultra-critical  spirit ;  higher  criticism 
underming  the  teachings  of  orthodoxy ;  the  shifting 
of  the  emphasis  from  the  beyond  as  of  yore  to  the 
present  life;  the  impression  that  the  Church  is  op- 
posed to  progress;  more  justice  and  less  charity; 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  57 

the  Church  on  the  side  of  the  upper  dog;  too  much 
distinction  between  clergy  and  laity  and  pandering 
to  wealth. 

Dr.  Charles  F.  Aked,  ex-pastor  of  the  Fifth  Ave- 
nue Baptist  Church,  New  York  City,  finds  the  sec- 
ret of  decadence  in  a  poorly-paid  ministry.  He  does 
not  see  how  ministers  who  are  paid  less  than  labor- 
ing men  and  artisans,  while  obliged  to  keep  them- 
selves and  their  families  and  their  homes  on  a  plane 
above  that  of  the  classes  mentioned,  can  command 
the  respect  of  men  intellectually.  They  cannot 
grow  because  they  cannot  buy  the  necessary  books 
on  which  to  feed  their  minds;  they  cannot  educate 
theii  children  because  it  takes  all  they  make  to  keep 
the  wolf  from  the  door;  they  see  no  hope  for  the 
days  of  the  "sere  and  yellow  leaf,"  and  so  they  drop 
out  of  a  calling  which  no  longer  allows  them  to  so 
develop  with  their  congregations  as  to  properly  dis- 
charge their  duties  as  ministers  to  the  people  and 
to  discharofe  their  duties  as  fathers  and  husbands 
to  their  families.  Dr.  Aked  says:  "The  nearest, 
most  important  single  reform  to  be  attempted  by  the 
religious  people  of  his  country  is  to  double  the  salary 
of  every  preacher  upon  the  continent." 

So  much  for  the  opinions  of  ecclesiastical  gen- 
erals. If  now  we  turn  to  the  pews  we  shall  find 
there  another  grist  of  answers  to  the  question, 
"What  ails  the  Church?"  We  can  get  it  any  day  at 
first  hand  by  taking  a  walk  of  six  blocks  and  talking 
with  the  people  we  meet.  They  are  always  ready 
to  discuss  the  theme.  An  ounce  of  soot  on  a  white 
garment  always  attracts  more  attention  and  excites 
more  remark  than  a  pail  full  of  soot  on  black  trous- 
ers. There  is  not  a  preacher  in  Christendom  who  has 
not  heard  the  growls.    They  run  something  like  this : 

Poor  preaching  in  the  pulpit;  the  rise  of  intel- 
ligence in  the  pew;  rented  pews  in  the  House  of 


58  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

God  (a  travesty  on  God's  hospitality,  sure  enough)  ; 
want  of  cordiality;  too  much  cordiality;  inconsist- 
ency of  church  members ;  no  enthusiasm ;  too  much  en- 
thusiasm (noise)  ;  absence  of  members  and  so  on. 
Aside  from  the  question  of  literacy  in  the  pulpit  the 
objections  filed  resolve  themselves  for  the  most  part 
into  one  word,  "inconsistency."  When  church  mem- 
bers are  inconsistent  in  their  lives,  the  whole  structure 
of  Christianity  is  imperilled  and  apt  to  go  down  about 
their  ears.  This  is  the  view  of  Rev.  Clyde  Elbert  Ord- 
way  who  writes  in  the  Arena  (1910)  on  the  theme 
"Will  the  Church  Survive?"  As  the  article  faithfully 
reflects  the  mind  of  many  laymen  a  portion  of  it  may 
be  quoted  here. 

Mr.  Ordway  notes  the  slackening  grip  of  the 
Church  upon  "the  life  of  the  time  as  manifested  by 
the  resort  to  cheap,  superficial  attractions  "rang- 
ing from  the  Seven-Cent  Social  to  Chain  W^hist ; 
from  Circle  Suppers  to  Amateur  Dramatics ;  from 
Ping-Pong  Parties  to  Three-Day  Fairs  or  Sales 
with  their  exorbitant  prices  and  guessing  contests 
(which  under  worldly  auspices  would  be  called  lot- 
teries)." 

He  sees  her  losing  ground  both  at  the  top  and 
the  bottom — over  wealthy  men  and  working  men, 
and  he  quotes  Dr.  Thomas,  of  Chicago,  pastor  of 
The  People's  Church. 

"Somehow  the  churches  have  lost  their  hold  upon 
the  confidence,  sympathies  and  almost  the  respect 
of  the  laboring  people.  I  asked  a  leader  of  a  labor 
union  of  three  hundred  members,  how  many  at- 
tended church.  'Practically  none,'  he  said.  'A  few 
women  may  go,  but  not  half  a  dozen  men  in  a  year.' 
Whether  right  or  wrong  the  laboring  men  feel  that 
the  churches  in  general  are  not  their  friends:  that 
they  are  for  the  rich  ;  that  money  controls  both  the 
pulpit  and  the  pew;  that  the  preachers  as  a  rule 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  59 

either  do  not  care  for  the  rights  of  the  laboring 
man  or  that  they  dare  not  plead  his  cause. 

"A  further  fact  that  keeps  the  world  aloof  from 
the  churches,  and  distrustful  of  them,  if  not  bitterly 
antagonistic  to  them,  is  the  evil  that  exists  in  their 
own  ranks.  For  example  their  quarrels  among  them- 
selves and  their  individual  members;  the  hypocrisy 
and  meanness  of  some  of  their  members ;  their  fail- 
ure in  general  to  live  up  to  and  exemplify  the  prin- 
ciples they  profess.  The  church  people  claim  a 
higher  life  and  better  principles  than  the  world, 
their  outside  friends  possess,  and  when  this  great 
body  of  outsiders  who  make  no  profession  of  holi- 
ness or  superior  character  or  principles,  see  within 
the  church  people  as  bad  or  worse  than  their  own 
(at  least  no  better  than  their  own  in  a  multitude 
of  cases)  they  naturally  look  with  distrust  upon 
the  whole  institution  and  entertain  but  little  re- 
spect for  it  either  as  sincere  or  efficient.  The 
churches  have  done  more  to  kill  themselves,  es- 
pecially in  the  eyes  of  the  outside  world,  by  their 
quarrels,  bigotry,  narrowness  and  littleness ;  their 
hypocritical  members,  questionable  morals  and 
various  exhibitions  of  an  unchristian  spirit  than 
all  their  enemies  have  done.  One  member  in  a 
church  who  has  a  character  which  the  outside  world 
cannot  respect,  or  one  such  church  quarrel  as  we 
often  witness,  does  the  churches  more  harm  than 
all  the  good  preaching  and  faithful  service  can  over- 
come in  many  years." 

We  have  heard  from  the  pew  and  heard  from  the 
pulpit ;  let  us  now  hear  from  the  professors.  Let 
Prof.  Rauschenbusch,  of  Rochester  Theological 
Seminary,  whose  notable  book,  "Christianity  and 
the  Social  Crisis,"  has  brought  him  prominently  be- 
fore the  public  eye,  speak.  But,  instead  of  gleaning 
his    sentiments    from    his    lengthy    and    luminous 


60  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

treatment  of  the  subject  in  his  book,  let  us  for 
brevity's  sake  gather  a  few  paragraphs  from  a  later 
utterance  as  given  to  Mr.  Ray  Stannard  Baker,  the 
well-known  writer,  for  the  American  Magazine  of 
December,  1909.  Incidentally,  it  may  not  be  amiss 
to  run  in  a  sentence  or  two  from  Mr.  Baker  him- 
self. 

After  noting  some  of  the  remedial  measures  be- 
ing employed — revivalism  in  the  West  "under  the 
spirited,  if  spectacular,  leadership  of  men  of  the 
type  of  Billy  Sunday" ;  in  the  East  "Immanuelism 
to  counteract  the  steady  encroachments  of  Chris- 
tian Science  and  the  New  Thought,"  and  every- 
where, "a  still  larger  and  more  active  group  of  lead- 
ers absorbed  in  building  new  outworks — parish 
houses  and  gymnasiums,  bowling  alleys  and  club 
rooms,  carpenter  shops,  shooting  galleries  and 
dance  halls  to  counteract  or  at  least  to  parallel  the 
advance  of  the  social  settlement  idea  and  the  ex- 
pansion of  functions  of  the  public  schools  and  other 
municipal  institutions,"  there  follows  the  report 
of  an  interview  with  Prof.  Rauschenbusch  and  a 
well-merited  appreciation  of  that  gentleman  and  his 
work.    The  article  proceeds : 

"In  my  conversation  with  Prof.  RauschenbuscH 
I  endeavored  to  draw  out  just  what  he  meant  by  the 
'new  evangelism'  and  what  in  his  opinion  the  future 
of  the  churches  in  this  country  would  be. 

"The  new  evangelism  is  made  up  of  the  same  ele- 
ments as  the  old :  First  it  seeks  to  convict  other 
men  of  sin ;  second  to  reconstruct  their  lives.  But 
the  conception  of  both  sin  and  reconstruction  in  the 
new  evangelism  is  immensely  broader  and  deeper 
than  in  the  old.  It  is  as  wide  as  humanity,  with 
a  vision  and  a  message  calculated  to  fire  the  souls 
of  men  as  nothing  in  the  past  has  ever  fired  them. 

*'The  new  evangelism  greatly  intensifies  our  con- 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  61 

ception  of  sin.  It  shows  how  impossible  it  is  to  sin 
any  sin  which  does  no#  pass  along  to  others.  It 
shows  how  all  men  are  linked  together,  and  that  the 
sin  of  one  injures  all,  so  that  each  man  realizes  that 
he  is  involved  in  the  whole  sin  of  mankind." 

I  asked  Prof.  Ratischenbusch  for  specific  in- 
stances as  to  how  the  conviction  of  social  sin  ought 
to  be  brought  about.  He  gave  me  as  a  single  ex- 
ample the  problem  of  the  wage  worker. 

"An  idle  woman  living  in  wasteful  luxury,"  he 
said,  "wants  more  beautiful  clothing,  more  jewelry. 
She  has  no  thought  of  what  her  selfish  wastefulness 
may  cost.  In  order  to  get  it  her  husband  pinches 
his  workingmen  to  the  lowest  possible  wage.  Let 
us  say  that  one  of  these  workingmen  has  a  sick 
child  and  because  he  is  so  poor  that  he  cannot  get 
a  doctor  promptly,  the  child  dies.  Unconsciously, 
but  with  the  certainty  of  cause  and  effect  that 
wasteful  and  luxurious  woman  has  helped  to  kill 
the  child." 

In  the  same  way  Prof.  Rauschenbusch  would 
show  that  the  crowded  and  unsanitary  tenement  is 
a  "sin  for  which  the  whole  city  suffers  the  punish- 
ment of  tuberculosis  and  other  diseases.  The  pun- 
ishment of  the  ruined  woman  infects  the  homes  of 
the  rich  equally  with  those  of  the  poor.  The  pun- 
ishment of  debauched  politics  finally  but  inevitably 
leads  to  the  ruin  of  the  fairest  city  and  the  finest 
civilization.  No  man  can  sin  by  himself  nor  be 
saved  by  himself.  "It  is  not  Christianity  to  pay  the 
lowest  wages  to  the  man  who  has  the  hungriest 
family. 

"All  the  present  teaching,  whether  within  the 
churches  or  outside  of  them,  of  the  responsibility 
of  society  for  the  ruin  of  the  child-workers,  for  low- 
paid  women,  for  the  criminals,  for  the  wasteful 
rich  man,  for  sickness,  for  want  and  shame  and  ugli- 


152  WHY.     THEY     FAIL 

ness,  are  all  in  the  way  of  convicting  humanity  of 
its  social  sins.  The  present  moral  wave,  which  is 
beginning  to  sweep  over  this  country,  is  an  evi- 
dence of  such  a  conviction  of  sin." 

The  next  step  in  the  religious  life  after  the  con- 
viction of  sin,  is  "salvation,"  a  turning  about,  a  new 
life.  Just  as  in  the  old  evangelism  the  individual 
has  to  be  "born  again,"  so  the  new  evangelism 
demands  a  new  birth  for  society.  A  complete 
change  must  take  place;  a  new  spirit  must  fire  hu- 
manity. And  every  man  and  every  organization, 
whether  church  leader  or  socialist,  or  labor  agitator 
or  publicist,  or  business  man,  who  has  a  vision  of 
the  new  time  and  is  working  toward  it,  is  a  new 
evangelist. 

But  what  will  this  regenerate  society  be  like? 
What  is  then,  the  vision  of  the  prophets?  I  give 
here  the  conviction  of  Prof.  Rauschenbusch. 

In  the  old  society,  the  society  we  know  now — 
the  greatest  sins  are  war,  strife,  competition — with 
the  resulting  luxury  for  a  few  and  want  for  the 
many.  The  new  social  life  then,  should  change  all 
this,  should  be  a  right-about  face — if  it  is  to  be  a 
true  re-birth.  There  must  be  peace,  not  war;  co- 
operation, not  competition;  and  in  place  of  ex- 
tremes of  luxury  and  want,  a  distribution  of  prop- 
erty which  will  assure  every  human  being  upon 
this  earth  a  chance  to  make  the  most  of  the  facul- 
ties God  has  given  him.  .  .  .  Such  is  the  new 
evangelism.  What  part  must  the  Church  and  re- 
ligious leaders  play  in  it?  A  very  great  part  Prof. 
Rauschenbusch  believes.  The  present  decadence 
of  Church  influence  and  leadership  he  attributes 
to  the  lack  of  the  new  vision,  so  that  much  of  the 
prophecy,  many  of  the  noblest  works  in  the  new 
evangelism,  have  been  left  to  men  and  women  who 
are  outside  of  the  churches.    The  trouble  has  been 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  63 

that  the  Church  has  been  too  anxious  to  magnify 
itself,  too  little  concerned  in  humanity. 

"The  mischief  begins  when  the  Church  makes 
herself  the  end.  She  does  not  exist  for  her  own 
sake ;  she  is  simply  a  working  organization  to  create 
the  Christian  life  in  individuals  and  the  Kingdom 
of  God  in  human  society." 

Religion  in  short  must  become,  "less  an  institu- 
tion and  more  a  diffused  force."  More  and  more 
the  state,  society  at  large,  will  be  shot  through  and 
through  with  the  spirit  of  religion,  and  yet  there 
will  never  be  a  time,  says  Prof.  Rauschenbusch, 
when  there  will  not  be  a  wide  field  of  activity  for 
the  religious  leader  and  teacher. 

Two  great  functions  will  occupy  his  attention. 
He  will  always  fill  the  office  of  prophecy;  he  should 
be  sensitized  morally  so  that  he  will  be  the  first  to 
discern  wrong  and  evil,  and  his  visions  will  fire 
the  souls  of  men.  And  he  will  also  follow  behind 
the  rumbling  wheels  of  the  chariot  of  state  and 
gather  up  the  wounded  and  comfort  the  broken- 
hearted— Jesus  perfectly  combined  both  of  these 
offices." 


Now  no  one  who  reads  the  foregoing  reasons  for 
failure  on  the  part  of  the  Church  to  realize  her 
possibilities  for  good  on  the  life  of  our  time  can 
help  being  impressed  with  the  trenchant  nature  of 
the  criticisms  made.  There  is  not  one  of  those 
remarks  but  is  significant  because  all  are  more  or 
less  true.  Not  one  of  them  is  an  idle  shot.  We 
feel  that  the  archers  have  done  well — and  yet  "in- 
ners"  as  they  are,  most  of  them,  we  somehow  feel 
that  not  one  has  hit  the  bull's  eye. 

For  if  we  examine  these  splendid  and  truly  help- 


64  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

ful  criticisms  we  find  that  even  when  the  lance  goes 
deepest  and  cuts  to  the  very  bone  it  yet  fails  to 
do  its  work  because  the  trouble  lies  deeper  than  the 
bone ;  it  lies  hidden  in  the  very  marrow  thereof. 
For  instance  when  Prof.  Rauschenbusch  tells  us 
that  the  present  decadence  of  the  Church's  influ- 
ence is  due  to  a  lack  of  the  social  vision,  which 
lack  he  would  remedy  with  up-to-date  information 
as  to  social  conditions ;  and  due  to  pure  egoism 
or  selfishness,  making  herself  an  end  instead  of  a 
means  to  an  end,  and  that  end  the  uplift  of  human- 
ity, its  salvation,  pbysicially,  morally  and  mentally 
as  well  as  spiritually — when  he  tells  us  all  this  we 
feel  the  weight  of  his  words  and  acknowledge  the 
justice  of  his  cause. 

And  when  Dr.  Hirsch  comes  forward  with  his 
subtle  observations  as  to  the  efifect  of  natural 
science  methods  which  count  nothing  settled  until 
settled  by  an  appeal  to  blowpipe  or  scalpel;  when 
he  tells  of  the  loosening  of  the  guy  ropes  of  faith 
by  the  antics  of  a  coterie  of  reckless  and  unreliable 
exponents  of  the  "Higher  Criticism";  when  he 
points  to  the  shifting  of  emphasis  in  a  generation 
from  the  unseen  and  eternal  futurity  to  the  present 
and  visible  and  sordid  but  tremendously  real  actu- 
ality; when  he  speaks  of  the  need  of  more  of  that 
"justice"  which  would  make  the  work  of  the  Asso- 
ciated Charities  so  much  easier,  and  when  he  men- 
tions the  worship  of  Mammon  and  Rank,  we  feel 
somehow  deeply  impressed  and  are  apt  to  say  to 
ourselves,  "That's  it.    That's  it." 

Then  comes  along  Dr.  Josiah  Strong  to  reinforce 
Prof.  Rauschenbusch's  finding  by  telling  us  that 
the  Church  is  out  of  the  procession  because  she 
has  been  too  individualistic  in  a  social  age,  and 
the  venerable  Dr.  Parkhurst  chimes  in  with  a  senti- 
ment to  the  effect  that  the  hard-headed,  busy  man 


WHY.     THEY     FAIL  65 

of  to-day  cares  more  for  the  deed  than  the  creed, 
which  sentiment  is  endorsed  with  loud  applause 
by  the  people  in  the  pew — with  sundry  additions 
of  their  own,  as  Mr.  Ordway  tells  us  and  as,  indeed, 
we  all  very  well  know.  And  to  all  this  in  shame 
and  candor,  we  bow  a  melancholy  assent. 

Dr.  Aked  comes  up  with  his  case  of  a  scandal- 
ously underpaid  ministry  and  that,  too,  we  admit 
is  a  factor,  though  not  nearly  so  close  to  the  heart 
of  the  situation  as  some  other  factors.  The  ferv- 
ent and  not  impractical  Dr.  Len  G.  Broughton  calls 
for  more  comprehensive  Bible  study  and  what  is 
apparently  an  institutional  church,  not  hearing  the 
equally  fervent,  devoted  and  gifted  Dr.  A.  C.  Dixon 
telling  us  that  the  institutional  church,  as  he  found 
it,  is  a  mistake  and  a  boomerang,  since  the  man 
recommended  by  the  employment  bureau  not  turn- 
ing out  very  well,  the  employer  blames  the  Church, 
and  therefore  contracts  a  prejudice;  the  man  hav- 
ing lost  his  job  blames  that  on  the  Church  by  some 
strange  process  of  reasoning  and  also  goes  away 
offended,  while  the  loaves  and  the  fishes  attracting 
a  multitude  of  proletariats,  the  self-respecting 
artisan  goes  off  "huffed"  in  his  turn,  lest  he  be 
taken  for  one  of  them  ;  and  so  the  Church,  with  the 
best  intentions  in  the  world,  by  her  institutional- 
ism  finds  herself  alienating  the  very  classes  she 
would  seek  to  help. 

Lastly,  Mr.  Gipsy  Smith  in  telling  us  that  we  are 
only  "playing  at  church"  and  in  virtually  writing 
"Ichabod"  above  the  doors,  indirectly  hints  at  the 
solution  of  the  difficulty  as  he  sees  it.  His  remedy 
would  be:  Back  to  God!  All  of  you.  Down  on 
your  knees.  Cry  aloud  for  forgiveness  and  a  real 
baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  everything  else  will 
take  care  of  itself. 

And  Gipsy  Smith,  the  great  evangelist,  is  un- 


66  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

doubtedly  right.  That  is  he  is  right  from  his  stand- 
point, which  is  also  a  pivotal  one  in  the  Church. 
When  it  comes  to  the  choice  of  medicines  purport- 
ing to  be  able  to  heal  the  acrid  humors  of  the  blood 
there  is  none  like  his.  Dr.  Len  G.  Broughton's  pre- 
scription, allopathic  doses  of  the  Bible,  goes  well 
with  it,  and  those  two  items  are  the  mightiest  in 
the  whole  foregoing  program  of  social  redemption. 
He  who  would  seek  to  belittle  them  knows  not 
what  he  does  nor  whereof  he  affirms.  Important  as 
the  other  considerations  are  they  do  not  begin  to  com- 
pare with  these  two  as  a  basis  of  treatment  for  what 
ails  us  all.    But  the  trouble  is  they,  too,  come  short. 

Theoretically  and  ideally,  Gipsy  Smith's  remedy 
is  sufficient.  Were  all  church  members  living  all 
the  time  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  spirit-filled  revival 
in  which  that  chosen  instrument  of  God  passes  his 
days,  the  world  would  be  heaps  better  than  it  is. 
But  the  fact  is  we  cannot  all  live  all  the  time  at 
the  fever-heat  of  a  genuine  revival.  It  has  never 
yet  been  done  in  the  mass.  The  cares  of  life  are 
too  numerous  and  too  insistent.  The  mightiest 
revivals  the  world  has  ever  known  have  been  but 
as  great  tidal  waves  from  heaven's  shores — waves 
which  left  the  individual  and  the  community  on  a 
higher  plane  of  life  than  before,  it  is  true,  but  left 
them  also  to  take  up  "the  trivial  round,  the  common 
task"  again  as  before.  Great  good  is  done  in  these 
revival  times ;  many  crooked  things  are  straightened 
out  while  they  last,  for  it  is  then  easier  to  do  right 
all  round;  but  alas!  the  impulse  passes  and  all  too 
soon  things  are  pretty  much  as  they  were  before. 
Fifty  thousand  head  of  stolen  cattle  may  be  re- 
stored through  Evangelist  Abe  Mulkey's  sermon 
on  "Restitution,"  but  he  cannot  be  preaching  that 
sermon  all  the  time,  and  if  he  could,  they  would 
soon  get  tired  of  it  and  count  it  a  bore.     Evan 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  67 

Roberts',  Dwight  L.  Moody's  and  Charles  G.  Fin- 
ney's appeals  did  much  to  clean  things  up  in  their 
day,  but  many  of  the  very  converts  who  in  those 
days  kissed  their  worst  enemies  and  threw  their 
pipes  into  the  ditch  in  an  outburst  of  real  Christian 
piety,  have  long  since  taken  to  buying  new  pipes 
and  saying  uncharitable  things  about  the  people 
they  don't  happen  to  like,  whether  in  the  Church  or 
out  of  it. 

For  all  that  revivals  are  blessed  experiences. 
Don't  take  this  word  as  in  any  sense  a  reflection 
on  them.  They  are  of  God  and  there  is  no  life  that 
has  been  touched  by  them  but  must  feel  the  healing 
in  that  touch.  The  point  is  that  they  do  not  last. 
They  may  bear  us  on  their  crest  into  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  and  they  may  give  us  a  mighty  boost 
heavenward  when  we  are  already  in  the  Kingdom, 
but  alas!  the  wave  recedes  and  we  are  left  on  the 
strand,  pilgrims  as  before,  staff  in  hand,  to  go  on  as 
ordained  of  old,  day  by  day  struggling  slowly,  fal- 
teringly  up  the  steep  and  rugged  pathway  of  the 
Right  and  Duty,  while  the  easy  grades  of  Inclina- 
tion and  Pleasure  pass  ever  so  appealingly  near 
that  we  fervently  wish,  and  often  try,  to  travel  with 
one  foot  on  each,  to  the  great  discomfiture  of  our 
peace  of  mind. 

Yes,  yes,  there  is  Divine  grace  and  all  that;  but 
it  is  that  same  all-wise  Divine  grace  which,  point- 
ing to  the  course  we  have  to  cover,  said  "they  shall 
mount  up  on  wings  as  eagles ;  they  shall  run  and  not 
be  weary;  they  shall  walk  and  not  faint."  There 
is  Divine  grace  all  the  way  through ;  but  it  isn't  a 
revival  all  the  way  through  by  any  means.  Mount- 
ing up  on  wings  as  eagles  is  all  very  beautiful,  and, 
praise  be,  it  is  a  fact ;  but  we  soon  come  down 
to  a  run,  and  then  to  a  walk,  and  even  as  Paul 


68  WHY.     THEY     FAIL 

gently  hints  to  the  Ephesians,  it  may  even  take  us 
all  our  time  to  "stand." 

That's  where  we  come  down — in  the  Christian 
walk  and  in  the  hour  of  pressure.  We  find  we  can- 
not "stand"  against  the  temptation.  The  mounts 
of  transfiguration  and  the  soaring  like  eagles  are 
blessed  incidents,  but  incidents  merely ;  the  more 
just  and  comprehensive  figure  is  that  of  the  long 
campaign  which  knows  no  truce,  and  the  long, 
long  way  which  cannot  be  taken  on  the  run. 

The  problem  in  its  last  analysis  has  in  none  of 
these  contributions  been  either  squarely  stated  or 
met.  They  tell  us  specifically  of  a  good  many  things 
which  ought  not  so  to  be.  They  tell  us  what  the 
Church  is  not  and  what  she  reprehensibly  is;  they 
point  out  many  blemishes  and  in  some  instances 
they  point  to  a  remedy,  but  the  remedy  is  the 
wrong  remedy  for  this  particular  case,  since  there  is 
one  factor  which  has  been  overlooked,  viz.,  a  grave 
error  in  the  diagnosis. 

As  a  single  error  in  his  calculations  may  throw 
an  astronomer  out  a  billion  miles  in  his  results, 
and  negative  a  lifetime  of  perfectly  correct  work: 
as  in  fact,  the  heavens  were  for  centuries  a  Chinese 
puzzle  because  Ptolemy  and  his  followers  over- 
looked one  simple  little  factor  in  the  equation,  that  the 
sun  and  not  the  earth  is  the  center  of  our  planetary 
system,  even  so  has  the  great  and  beautiful,  the 
persistent,  the  magnificent,  the  truly  glorious  en- 
deavor of  the  Church  and  her  allied  forces  steadily 
failed  of  attaining  the  goal  toward  which  she 
panted,  because  they  have  never  yet  clearly  recog- 
nized why  it  is  that  they  do  fail.  The  real  trouble 
lies,  not  in  the  fact  that  those  whom  the  Church 
and  her  allied  forces  have  trained  will  not  do  the 
good,  or  do  not  knozv  the  good,  but  that  they  do 
not  find  themselves  able  to  do  the  good  they  know. 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  69 

There  is  an  ethical  insufficiency,  and  that  ethical  in- 
sufficiency is  born  of  an  oversight  in  our  methods 
of  education,  which  has  sent  childhood  and  youth 
out  into  the  stern  world  of  facts  and  action  like 
Richard  III,  "but  half  made  up."  This  it  will  con- 
tinue to  do,  with  the  certainty  of  death  and  taxes, 
until  we  wake  up  to  the  fact  that  the  brain  in  a 
boy's  skull  is  as  directly  and  importantly  related  to 
his  present  and  future  moral  action  as  it  is  to  his 
present  and  future  mental  action,  and  consequent 
success  in  life,  and  begin  to  take  notice  of  what 
goes  on  there  and  make  some  such  intelligent  and 
persistent  efifort  to  help  the  boy  build  an  ethically 
sufficient  brain  as  we  now  take  to  help  him  build 
one  that  is  mentally  sufficient  for  life's  demands. 

There  is  need  of  more  social  information  it  is 
true ;  and  there  is  need  of  a  more  comprehensive 
knowledge  of  the  word  of  God ;  but  the  supreme 
need  of  our  day  is  neither  the  one  nor  the  other, 
valuable  as  is  the  one  and  indispensable  as  is  the 
other.  Neither  the  Church  nor  society  is  languish- 
ing for  lack  of  knowledge  as  to  what  we  ought  to 
do.  politically,  socially  or  ethically.  They  are  lan- 
guishing because  knowing  the  good  they  find  them- 
selves somehow  unable  to  do  it.  There's  the  rub 
and  there's  the  hint,  the  Ariadne  clue  which  will, 
if  we  follow  it  faithfully,  lead  us  out  of  our  laby- 
rinth of  difficulties  into  the  clear  air  of  reasonably 
irreproachable  lives. 

So  general  has  been  the  failure  to  develop  a  type 
of  character  which  will  stand  the  shock  and  strain 
of  temptation  in  our  day  that  thoughtful  men  have 
been  at  times  much  exercised  thereby.  And  not 
without  profit.  Help  seems  coming  from  a  most 
unexpected  quarter.  As  fraternal  societies  have 
undertaken  to  relieve  the  Church  of  much  of  her 
social  burden,  and  as  a  brood  of  temperance  and 


70  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

moral  reform  organizations  have  arisen  to  lead  the 
charge  against  entrenched  evils,  so  the  public 
school  is  now  rising  up  to  essay  the  task  in  which 
the  Church  as  distinctively  such,  has  once  more 
failed,  viz.,  the  task  of  producing  a  type  of  char- 
acter which  is  ethically  strong  enough  to  stand  in 
commerce,  politics  and  civic  relations  generally. 

The  most  prominent  educators  of  the  land,  look- 
ing at  the  lives  that  go  down,  and  looking  at  the 
Church  and  her  affiliated  societies  wringing  their 
hands  in  helpless,  confessed  inability  to  cope  with 
the  situation,  are  saying  to  themselves:  "Some- 
thing must  be  done.  We  have  the  children  in  our 
care;  we  have  a  costly  plant  ready  to  hand;  we  have 
a  vast  army  of  trained  assistants;  maybe  it  is  our 
business  to  do  more  than  we  have  been  doing  to 
help  prepare  the  child  to  play  his  or  her  part  in  the 
drama  of  life,  to  help  make  a  higher,  stronger,  truer 
type  of  citizenship. 

But  it  is  not  with  that  conception  as  a  concep- 
tion we  are  concerned.  That  is  not  new  either  as 
a  theory  or  in  practice.  Other  nations  have  even 
shown  us  the  way — the  imperfect  way — and  good 
men  and  women  have  zealously  striven  in  our 
schools,  even  beyond  what  was  written,  to  instruct 
the  boys  and  girls  in  those  guiding  principles  of 
conduct,  a  knowledge  of  which  is  supposed  to  be 
all  that  is  necessary  to  produce  the  desired  ethical 
result  on  the  street. 

France  and  Germany,  and  even  Japan,  have  all 
labored  real  hard  at  this.  They  take  the  work  seriously 
over  seas  and  attend  to  it  religiously.  In  France, 
for  instance,  children  from  seven  to  eleven  are 
given  two  thirty-minute  doses  of  moral  instruction 
per  week.  From  eleven  to  thirteen  years  they  get 
three  doses  of  the  same  size,  nor  is  there  any  let-up 
in   the   high   school.     And   should   the   pupil   be  an 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  71 

aspirant  for  pedagogical  honors  then  the  medicine 
must  be  given  four  times  a  week  throughout  the 
subsequent  two-year  course  at  the  Normal  School. 

If  we  turn  to  Germany  we  find  that  they  are 
even  more  determined  and  thoroughgoing  in  this  than 
the  French.  They  take  no  chances.  They  give 
the  youngsters  four  hours  a  week  throughout  the 
entire  course.  In  Germany  the  teaching  is  apt  to 
be  administered  by  the  Church,  which  is  as  truly 
a  state  institution  over  there  as  are  the  schools. 
No  use  in  the  state  having  priests  if  it  doesn't 
make  use  of  them.  But  in  France  the  case  is  dif- 
ferent. They  get  along  without  God  in  their  moral 
instruction  in  the  schools.  Duty  and  conscience 
will  do,  they  say.  And  what  is  the  result?  Ger- 
many "reacts"  unfavorably,  going  off  in  whole  land- 
slides toward  socialism,  which  in  that  country 
means  atheism,  while  France  for  the  most  part 
deems  it  immaterial  whether  there  be  a  God  in  the 
heavens  at  all  or  not. 

What  is  wrong  then?  Is  it  not  admirable  to  have 
the  state  schools  endeavor  to  turn  out  the  very 
highest  type  of  moral  character?  It  is  wholly  ad- 
mirable so  to  do.  And  how  shall  the  child  becorne 
a  moral  man  unless  he  be  well  instructed  in  his 
duties  to  his  parents,  brothers,  neighbors,  the  state 
and  humanity  at  large?  True  enough.  It  looks 
likeaQ.E.D.,  doesn't  it?    But 

The  evil  spot  is  in  the  way  in  which  it  is  being 
done.  If  a  boy  be  nothing  more  than  a  quart  jug 
which  invariably  gives  out  precisely  what  has  been 
put  into  it,  no  more,  no  less,  then  that  logic  is 
unassailable.  But  if  the  boy  be  not  a  quart  jug, 
but  a  certain  marvellous  protean  something  which 
is  sensitive  as  a  photographer's  plate  and  uncertain 
as  a  yearling  colt,  always  breaking  out  in  a  new 
place  in  spite  of  all  that  can  be  done  apparently 


72  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

to  prevent  him,  then  it  is  possible  there  may  be 
something  wrong  with  our  methods  of  handling 
him.  It  begins  to  dawn  upon  us  as  possible  that 
loading  him  down  with  nice  moral  precepts  may 
no  more  serve  to  change  his  innermost  moral  being 
than  stringing  buck-eyes  on  a  cat's  tail  will  change 
the  nature  of  a  feline  veteran. 

Prof.  John  Dewey,  of  Chicago  University,  puts 
the  matter  very  nicely  when  he  observes  "the  incul- 
cation of  moral  rules  is  no  more  likely  to  make 
character  than  is  that  of  astronomical  formulae." 

Within  the  past  ten  years  there  has  arisen  not 
only  a  new  demand  for  a  general  tightening-up  of 
the  fibers  of  moral  character  in  the  embryonic  citi- 
zenship coming  forth  from  our  schools  but  there  has 
happily  also  come  to  pass  the  discovery  of  a  prin- 
ciple which  is  revolutionary  and  well  adapted  to 
produce  the  desired  results  in  so  far  as  the  public 
school  has  to  do  with  them.  That  principle  is  after 
all  not  a  new  principle.  It  has  been  in  use  in  our 
schools  for  over  a  hundred  years.  What  is  new  is 
its  application.  And  it  is  revolutionary,  because, 
as  it  revolutionized  the  system  of  acquiring  an  edu- 
cation when  Froebel  and  Pestalozzi  first  preached 
it  in  the  latter  part  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  so 
now  it  will  revolutionize  the  acquisition  of  moral 
character  as  it  comes  to  be  more  and  more  generally 
and  intelligently  applied. 

Possibly  the  greatest  deliverance  on  education 
ever  made  by  man  was  that  given  by  Froebel  when 
he  set  forth  his  doctrine  that  self-activity  is  the 
creative  factor  in  the  child's  life,  urging  that  the  child's 
whole  self  be  active,  not  merely  some  special  faculty, 
and  that  this  activity,  calling  for  the  use  of  all  its 
senses  and  powers,  be  stimulated  and  directed  by 
the  teacher  in  an  environment  adapted  to  the  end 
in  view. 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  73 

The  great,  earnest  thinkers  of  the  educational 
world  on  this  side  of  the  water  have  noNv  begun  to 
clearly  recognize  that  the  same  great  principle  applies 
to  ethical  education.  And  while  it  is  as  yet  only 
at  the  top  that  this  perception  has  become  quite 
clear  and  the  great  body  of  the  teaching  profession 
as  yet  knows  little  of  it,  yet  the  day  is  not  far 
distant  when  they  will.  No  great  discovery  can 
be  kept  hidden  from  the  world  at  large,  and  this  new 
light  is  breaking  in  on  ever  lower  strata  of  the 
profession,  till,  in  twenty  years  from  now  or  less, 
every  cross-roads  schoolhouse  in  the  land  will  have 
seen  the  great  light  and  begun  to  work  effectively 
in  the  making  of  men  and  women. 

While  this  is  not  the  place  for  any  extended  dis- 
cussion of  this  principle  as  it  relates  itself  to  our 
public  school  system,  a  paragraph  or  two  may  not 
be  amiss  at  this  point.  The  new  conception  of  edu- 
cation exalts  character  where  the  old  exalted 
scholarship.  Of  course  the  old  did  not  despise  char- 
acter. As  has  been  said,  it  was  far  from  doing  so. 
Next  to  scholarship  it  thought  upon  character- 
building.  Unfortunately  it  didn't  know  just  how  to 
build,  so  that  the  attempts  were  in  the  main  fruit- 
less, as  illustrated  in  the  case  of  the  boy  who  was 
expelled  from  a  certain  high  school  for  misconduct 
and  went  forth  exultantly  remarking:  'T  got  fired, 
but  I  got  ninety-eight  per  cent  in  ethics."  Now 
there  is  a  radical  change  not  only  of  aim  but  of 
method.  Not  only  is  moral  character  to  be  put 
before  scholarship,  but  the  whole  curriculum  of 
studies  is  to  ethicized  and  the  whole  school  is  to 
be  turned  into  an  ethical  workshop  and  the  campus 
into  a  training  school  of  virtue.  No  more  filling 
with  moral  maxims  w^hich  "rattle  around  in  human 
skulls  like  dried  seeds  in  poppy  heads."  No  more 
squaring  of  the  boy  by  the  yardstick  of  a  man's 


74  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

world ;  no  more  filling  him  up  with  information  as 
to  what  voters  and  other  functionaries  (who  are 
about  as  real  to  him  as  troglodytes)  are  expected 
to  think  and  do;  no  more  telling  him  to  be,  morally, 
a  man  when  he  is  only  a  little  boy.  He  is  now  to  be 
regarded  as  a  real  boy  in  a  real  world — a  boy's 
world  it  is  true,  but  a  world  which  is  just  as  tre- 
mendously real,  and  just  as  important  to  him  for 
all  that,  as  is  any  other  world  he  will  ever  inhabit 
in  this  life. 

This  world,  it  is  found,  is,  after  all,  but  a  minia- 
ture of  our  own.  It  is  therefore  a  social  world,  and 
the  unit  in  it  has  pretty  much  the  same  kind  of  re- 
lations to  his  fellows  as  he  will  have  in  the  larger 
world  outside  later  on.  Hence  as  his  brain  is  plastic 
in  the  boy-world  and  very  susceptible  to  impres- 
sions he  is  to  be  got  ready  now  for  the  big  world's 
race  of  to-morrow,  not  by  being  made  to  wear 
his  father's  ethical  boots,  but  by  being  made  to 
wear  his  own  of  proper  size  and  quality.  As  he 
grows  they  grow,  and  so  wdien  he  gets  into  a  man's 
world  of  action  he  will  walk  without  a  limp,  for 
behold !  his  feet  and  his  boots  and  his  father's  boots 
are  all  of  a  size. 

Now  the  same  principles  run  through  boy-world 
that  run  through  our  own.  And  what  is  it  we 
desire  to  see  in  our  own?  Is  it  not  justice,  kindness, 
helpfulness,  courage,  manliness,  honesty  and  the 
like?  Certainly  it  is.  Then  let  us  get  our  boys  at 
it,  say  the  teachers,  and  keep  them  at  it,  since 
their  faculties  are  bound  to  "grow  to  the  mode  in 
which  they  are  exercised."  If  we  have  to  teach 
this  boy  to  be  helpful  to  others,  the  best  way  is 
to  have  him  go  at  it  and  do  it.  Hence  in  his  reading 
lesson  he  is  to  read  something  for  the  benefit 
of  the  school  which  the  others  do  not  know.  If 
they  don't  know,  he  feels  that  he  is  doing  something 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  75 

for  the  good  of  his  kind  and  his  soul  is  filled  with 
a  glow  of  altruistic  pleasure.  Incidentally  he  learns 
how  to  read.  Does  he  write?  Then  it  is  no  dry-as- 
dust  and  hateful  composition  about  something  in 
which  nobody  under  heaven  is,  or  ever  was,  in- 
terested; he  must  write  something  that  will  be  of 
use  to  somebody,  for  instance,  an  invitation  to 
father  or  brother  to  come  to  the  next  ball  game 
or  Friday  exercises.  Of  course,  it  has  to  be  done 
in  proper  form.  And  so,  incidentally  he  learns  to 
write — but  mostly  he  has  learned  to  help — for  has 
he  not  done  something  which  has  social  meaning? 
And  so  on  with  the  whole  gamut  of  school  studies. 

And  the  playground  becomes  another  part  of  his 
moral  training  school.  He  is  brought  face  to  face 
there  with  his  deed  and  with  that  thing  that  all 
men  fear — public  opinion.  There  it  is  just  as  real 
and  just  as  dreadful  as  it  is  down  at  the  club  or  in 
the  sewing  circle.  "You  may  send  your  boy  to  the 
master,"  says  Emerson,  "but  the  boys  will  educate 
him."  Now  that  education  is  to  be  supervised, 
that  is  all,  tactfully,  kindly,  unobtrusively,  but  none 
the  less  truly,  so  that  the  bad  impulses  get  nipped 
in  the  bud  and  the  good  ones  are  encouraged  in 
the  sunshine  of  a  smile  of  public  recognition,  and 
the  boy  learns  team  play  without  crookedness; 
learns  by  something  swifter,  mightier,  more  living 
than  any  precepts  he  ever  heard ;  learns  and  is  not 
laid  by  the  heels  when  later  he  meets  the  old 
tricks  in  new  forms.  Everything  he  will  ever  do 
in  manhood  he  is  doing  as  a  boy,  and  learning  it 
by  the  doing  of  it.  Therefore,  our  educational  pow- 
ers are  saying,  let  us  see  to  it  that  he  is  kept  busy, 
by  one  means  or  another,  always  doing  the  right 
thing,  which  in  other  words  is  the  just  thing  or  the 
altruistic  thing. 

Now  this   is  a  glorious  thought.     It   needs   no 


76  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

prophet's  vision  to  see  the  mighty  impetus  toward 
righteousness  this  new  conception  is  destined  to 
bring  in  its  wake.  Its  influence  will  be  simply- 
revolutionary,  as  may  possibly  be  more  clearly  dis- 
cerned in  the  light  of  succeeding  pages.  But  the 
question  arises,  is  this  new  and  tremendously  ef- 
ficient instrument  to  be  left  wholly  to  the  far-seeing, 
patient  and  in  every  way  splendid  body  of  men  and 
women  who  have  charge  of  our  secular  education? 

They  have  been  driven  by  the  need  of  the  hour 
and  by  ecclesiastical  inefficiency  to  assume  the  re- 
sponsibility of  character-building  for  the  nation. 
They  have  taken  the  initial  steps  toward  that  end 
and  they  will  yet  accomplish  wonders,  for  theirs 
is  the  longest  grip  of  all  on  child  life,  on  the  man  of 
to-morrow.  For  the  greater  part  of  the  waking 
hours  of  five  days  in  seven  the  boy  is  in  the  hands 
of  the  day-school  teacher.  For  one,  two,  or  three 
hours  in  the  seven  days  of  the  week  the  Church  gets 
his  ear ;  therefore  the  chief  sphere  of  ethical  training 
must  be  in  the  day-school. 

Yet  the  whole  burden  should  not  be,  can  not  be, 
laid  on  the  public-school  teachers,  because  in  the 
first  place  the  rank  and  file  of  them  are  not  as  yet 
wiser  than  their  forbears  in  this  matter.  Three- 
fourths  of  them  it  is  said  have  not  even  had  a 
normal  school  training.  And  in  the  second  place, 
character-building  is  the  essence  of  church  work 
and  responsibility.  The  first  school,  God  Al- 
mighty's school,  is  the  home,  and  the  Church  stands 
more  nearly  related  to  the  home  than  does  the  state 
school.  Man's  relations  to  his  Maker  must  ever 
take  precedence  of  his  relations  to  his  fellow.  So 
long  as  man  remains  "incurably  religious"  the 
church  spire  must  remain  in  men's  thought  nearer 
to  the  family  altar  than  "the  little,  red  school- 
house." 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  77 

Moreover,  the  Church  is  able  to  teach  with  some- 
thing more  than  the  authority  of  the  teachers  of  this 
world,  and  if  she  will  only  be  wise  enough  to 
adopt  their  methods  on  occasion  she  will  be  able 
to  improve  on  their  work.  The  children  of  this 
world  (darlings  they  are,  some  of  them)  are  in  their 
generation  wiser  than  the  children  of  light,  but 
their  reach  does  not  extend  so  far  in  this  case  as 
docs  that  of  the  Church,  functioning  as  the  Sunday- 
school.  They  lack  the  compelling  imperative  which 
in  the  last  analysis  constrains  us  all,  however  we 
may  brag  and  blow. 

The  day-school  will  teach  morals,  but  what  are 
its  sanctions?  Conscience;  Duty;  Your  Best  Self; 
Humanity.  But  just  why  we  should  be  constrained 
to  unpleasant  courses  for  those  things  is  not  clear 
to  all  men.  If  death  end  all,  a  short  life  and  a  merry 
one  will  suit  some  people  who  think  "One  crowded 
hour  of  glorious  life  is  worth  an  age  without  a 
name."  Moreover,  who  is  to  choose  for  us  in  the 
matter?  By  what  authority  does  any  man  tell  us 
that  we  must  follow  conscience,  duty,  our  best 
selves  or  humanity?  When  someone  told  the  great 
agnostic,  Huxley,  of  August  Comte's  Positivist  phil- 
osophy which  teaches  the  worship  of  humanity,  he 
said  he  would  as  soon  worship  a  wilderness  of  apes 
as  worship  humanity.  Who  has  authority  to  im- 
pose these  standards  upon  us  with  authority?  If 
it  be  said  that  happiness  lies  that  way,  then  we  say, 
"Permit  us  to  judge  as  to  what  is  happiness  for  us." 
And  so  it  goes.  But  if  we  say,  "Do  these  things 
because  they  are  right,  because  they  are  fixed  prin- 
ciples in  the  constitution  of  a  universe  which  is  at 
the  bottom  moral,  based  on  righteousness,  and  be- 
cause there  is  One  above  us  and  outside  of  us  who 
is  both  able  and  determined  to  see  that  each  dere- 
liction shall  meet  with  its  due  recompense  of  re- 


.78  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

ward,  then,  and  then  only  have  we  got  an  impera- 
tive of  life  binding  upon  all  men. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  Church  to  bring  the  soul 
face  to  face  with  God,  who  requires  us  to  do  justly, 
love  mercy  and  walk  humbly  with  Him.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  Church,  knowing  this  dread  sanction 
as  no  other  institution  does  or  can  know  it,  to 
train  up  the  child  in  the  fear  and  knowledge  of  that 
Name,  remembering  that  "the  fear  of  the  Lord  is 
the  beginning  of  wisdom."  The  new  life  it  is  not 
ours  to  impart.  That  comes  only  from  the  Source 
of  all  life ;  but  it  is  ours  to  prepare  the  soul  of 
the  boy  for  its  reception  and  development.  To  say 
otherwise  is  to  discredit  and  decry  the  Sunday- 
school  and  the  instruction  we  received  at  our 
mother's  knee.  No  one  is  so  idiotic  as  to  advocate 
that.  No  one  wants  to  say  that  the  work  of  the 
Sunday-school  is  useless,  or  that  what  it  already 
has,  is,  and  is  doing  should  be  changed. 

What  is  said  here  is  that  its  work  has  largely 
failed  because  it  is  incomplete.  It  is  not  a  change 
that  is  needed ;  it  is  an  addition.  And  that  addition 
is  one  of  principle  and  method — the  addition  of  a 
principle  and  method  so  common,  so  simple,  so  in- 
dispensable that  no  day-school  teacher,  no  house- 
keeper, no  farmer,  no  artisan,  no  business  man,  no 
preacher,  no  professor,  no  cook,  no  seamstress,  no 
singer,  no  doer  that  ever  did  since  "Adam  delved 
and  Eve  span"  has  ever  presumed  to  think  that  he 
or  she  could  get  along  without  it — none  but  the 
Church  and  her  workers  charged  with  the  highest 
of  all  commissions,  that  of  perfecting  humanity  in 
the  fear  of  God. 


WHY.      THEY     FAIL  79 


Foreword  to  Chapter  III 

"Action  is  education,"  — Emerson. 

"The  chief  end  of  man  is  an  action,  not  a 
thought."  — Carlyle. 

"The  harper  is  not  made  otherwise  than  harping, 
nor  the  just  man  otherwise  than  by  doing  just 
deeds."  — Aristotle. 


CHAPTER  III 


WHY  THEY   FAIL 

In  the  last  analysis  there  are  but  two  fundamental 
principles  of  education,  viz.,  impression  and  reflex 
action.  Church,  homes,  schools  have  lamentably 
failed  in  the  supreme  task  of  turning  out  an  ethic- 
ally sufficient  character  for  the  simple  reason  that 
they  have,  ethically,  all  but  ignored  the  second  of 
these  principles  in  their  educational  work.  Once 
the  Almighty  ordains  that  a  man  shall  walk  on  two 
legs  it  takes  a  very  smart  man  to  make  equal  prog- 
ress on  one,  and  he  is  a  mighty  clever  oarsman 
indeed,  who  can  win  a  race  with  one  oar,  while  the 
birdman  or  bird  has  yet  to  be  found  that  can  rise 
by  the  use  of  only  one  wing.  When  men  can  run 
on  one  foot  and  scull  with  one  oar,  then,  and  then 
only,  may  we  hope  to  make  adequate  progress  in 
ethical  education  by  doing  as  we  have  been  wont — 
using   impression    only    where    the    Almighty    has 


80  WHY.      THEY     FAIL 

ordained  the  use  of  impression  in  conjunction  with 
its  necessary  correlate,  reflex  action. 

Talk  about  why  the  Church  fails !  There  is  no 
mystery  about  it.  It  is  all  plain  as  a  pike  staff. 
If  there  is  any  mystery  about  it  the  mystery  is 
as  to  how  she  has  managed  to  do,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, as  much  as  she  has  accomplished. 
None  but  the  Church  could  have  done  it  under 
a  similar  handicap,  and  after  all,  she  has  done  it 
because  instinctively,  blindly,  she  has  in  a  small 
way  made  use  of  this  secondary  principle  of  educa- 
tion, otherwise  she  could  hardly  have  lived  in  more 
than  name.  Without  the  great  reflex  of  missions, 
home  and  foreign,  the  Church  would  long  ago  have 
been  bundled  to  the  scrap  heap,  or  have  dwindled 
into  a  social  club — which  is  about  what  some  of 
it3  branches  are  as  it  is.  But  what  we  have  been 
doing  blindly,  instinctively  in  a  small  way,  and  for 
the  most  part  not  doing  at  all,  it  behooves  us  to  do 
now  intelligently,  systematically  and  universally. 
We  have  found  the  leak  that  has  been  threatening 
to  sink  the  ship  in  spite  of  all  our  pumping  and 
baling;  let  us  arise  and  heal  the  breach,  and  she 
will  soon  be  riding  the  waves  in  her  true  char- 
acter as  the  white-winged  messenger  of  heaven.  In 
plain  English,  let  the  Church  find  adequate  means  of 
expression  for  the  good  impressions  she  has  been  creat- 
ing in  such  variety  and  profusion,  and  in  less  than 
two  decades  her  reproach  will  have  been  taken 
away,  for  she  will  then  have  turned  out  the  kind 
of  citizen  who  will  be  able  to  discharge  like  a  man 
his  obligations  to  his  home,  his  Church  and  his 
country.  The  Church's  intentions  are  all  right;  she 
gets  a  black  eye  only  because  about  three-fourths 
of  all  her  effort  is  lost  while  only  one-fourth  of  it 
comes  to  fruition. 

It  was  stated  on  a  previous  page  that  the  reason 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  81 

for  our  widespread  failure  lies  in  the  fact  that  we 
have  turned  our  boy  out  into  the  stern  world  of  choice 
and  action  ethically  "but  half  made-up" ;  that  we 
have  been  at  little  or  no  pains  to  develop  intelli- 
gently the  ethical  action  cells  in  his  brain,  for  lack 
of  the  development  of  which  he  found  himself  un- 
able to  do  in  manhood  the  good  he  knew  and  felt  he 
ought  to  do.  And  the  reason  of  that  is  found  in  the 
further  fact  that  we  have  neglected  the  second,  and, 
one  might  also  say  the  more  powerful,  principle  of 
all  education,  reflex  action,  without  which  it  is 
absolutely  impossible  to  build  a  brain  capable  of 
standing  up  against  the  odds  of  this  highly  refined 
and  more  exacting  age. 

Were  we  living  in  an  age  of  less  social  com- 
plexity and  lower  social  ideals — such  an  age  for 
instance  as  that  which  produced,  not  the  barons  of 
corporate  greed,  but  the  real,  old-fashioned  armor- 
plate  kind  who  held  that  might  is  the  right  of  the 
strongest;  the  age  when  men  sold  their  lives  for 
a  pound  and  were  hanged  for  the  theft  of  a  shilling, 
we  might  worry  along  very  well  without  this  doc- 
trine. But  we  are  not  living  in  such  an  age.  We 
are  living  at  a  time  when  the  complexities  of  eco- 
nomic life  and  its  concentrations  of  capital  not  only 
afford  strange  temptations  to  financial  delinquency 
but  cause  anxious  quest  to  be  made  for  uprightness 
in  character,  and  anxious  scrutiny  to  be  made  of  all 
candidates  presenting  themselves  for  positions  of 
trust,  in  hope  that  they  may  indeed  be  found  worthy 
of  the  confidence  of  the  thousands  whose  interests 
are  necessarily  placed  in  their  hands,  the  days  when 
John  Doe  could  run  his  business  to  suit  himself 
and  keep  his  money  in  a  sock,  having  some  time 
ago  departed. 

Business  men  naturally  looked  to  the  Church  and 
the  Sunday-school  to  produce  the  required  brand  of 


82  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

character,  but  there  are  not  wanting  signs  that  their 
eyes  fail  of  looking.  The  writer  on  one  occasion 
went  to  eight  of  the  leading  business  men  of  a  cer- 
tain town  in  which  he  was  staying  and  asked  them 
this  question  :  "If  two  men  come  to  you  asking 
for  credit  and  absolutely  all  you  know  about  them 
is  that  the  one  is  a  professing  Christian  and  the 
other  is  not,  would  you  give  accommodation  to 
the  one  who  is  a  professing  Christian  any  more 
quickly  than  you  would  to  the  other?" 

Five  out  of  the  eight  said  "No."  One  or  two  of 
the  others  thought  they  would  rather  trust  the  man 
who  made  no  profession,  and  not  one  of  them 
offered  his  opinion  with  the  slightest  sign  of  inward 
satisfaction.  In  fact,  most  of  them  were  church 
members,  and  one  of  them,  since  gone  to  his  re- 
ward, stands  out  in  memory  as  a  rare  jewel  in  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  With  deep  sadness  in  his  voice 
he  said,  "I  was  not  always  thus,  but  I  have  learned 
in  the  hard  school  of  bitter  experience  that  church 
membership  doesn't  count  for  much  in  business." 

One  may  not  make  a  general  inference  from  so 
slight  an  induction  it  is  true,  but  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  the  foregoing  incident  is  at  least  symptomatic. 
And  when  we  place  it  alongside  the  conditions  out- 
h'ned  in  Chapter  I.  it  appears  "all  of  a  piece" — quite 
germane  to  the  situation:  it  does  not  look  like  a 
soiled  patch  on  an  otherwise  fair  garment. 

Again  we  ask,  Why  are  these  things  thusly?  Why 
is  that  there  are  such  moral  landslides?  Parents 
wonder,  preachers  wonder,  teachers  wonder,  and  all 
mourn  because  of  it,  for  it  has  not  come  without 
the  most  heroic  efforts  to  avert  the  disaster.  Only 
heaven  can  properly  appraise  the  volume  of  prayer, 
instruction  and  effort  which  has  gone  unselfishly 
outward  and  upward  in  behalf  of  the  young. 

To  understand  properly  the  why  of  this  immeas- 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  83 

urably  significant  question,  let  us  follow  the  physi- 
ologist, the  neurologist  and  the  psychologist  into 
their  secret  chambers  and  shut-to  the  door  behind 
us.  The  laboratory  we  shall  find  is  a  temple  of 
learning  in  which  they  are  the  priests  and  we  the 
acolytes.  Sitting  at  the  feet  of  these  priests  of  the 
temple  who  offer  up  Hfe  itself  as  the  incense  of  their 
worship  and  the  price  of  the  information  they 
would  gain,  we  shall  learn  many  things.  Or  to 
change  the  figure,  we  are  the  jury  and  these  high 
priests  of  science  are  the  experts  who  shall  lay  be- 
fore us  their  expert  testimony,  and  we  shall  then 
be  able  to  judge  in  the  premises  before  us  by  the 
light  of  their  evidence  as  to  what  is  right  and  what 
is  wrong  in  the  case  in  hand.  And  so,  calling  up 
our  Grays,  our  Carpenters  and  Alaudsleys,  our 
Wundts,  our  ATossos  and  Schiaperellis,  our  Jameses 
and  Baldwins,  our  Miinsterbergs,  Thorndykes  and 
Titcheners,  our  Goes  and  Deweys,  our  Judds  and 
our  Jastrows,  we  find  that  they  bear  explicit  and 
eloquent  testimony  to  the  place  and  power  of  re- 
flex action  in  every  manifestation  of  human  life. 

But  in  order  to  understand  this  reflex  action 
some  knowledge  of  that  most  marvellous  of  all  ma- 
chines, the  human  body,  is  necessary.  Particularly 
must  we  know  something  of  that  superior  order  of 
the  physical  parts  known  as  the  nervous  system. 
Skin,  bone,  sinew,  gland  and  muscle  fiber  are  all 
dependent  for  nutrition,  action  and  their  very  life 
on  that.  Yea,  the  very  thoughts  we  think  in  our 
present  sphere  of  existence  are  conditioned  by  it. 
It  is  that,  therefore,  with  which  we  shall  have  to 
do  if  we  would  understand  why  it  is  we  have  failed 
in  our  efforts  at  ethical  education. 

Putting  it  as  simply  as  possible,  the  nervous 
system  of  man  is  encased  for  the  most  part,  like  the 
delicate  parts  of  a  watch,  in  a  hard  covering,  and  for 


84  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

the  very  same  reason,  that  they  may,  as  being  so 
very  important,  be  protected  from  injury.  That  hard 
covering  is  of  bone  and  we  call  it  the  skull  and  the 
spinal  column.  The  headquarters  of  the  nervous 
system  are  not  only  in  the  brain  but  they  consti- 
tute the  brain  and  they  have  branch  offices,  so  to 
speak,  of  varying  importance  in  the  back  of  the 
head  and  at  intervals  down  the  spinal  column  to 
the  last  vertebra.  The  substance  of  the  brain  and 
the  spinal  cord  is  essentially  the  same,  a  soft  pulpy 
mass  very  unlike  anything  else  in  the  body.  Under 
the  microscope  it  is  found  to  be  vastly  different  in 
structure  from  all  the  other  tissues.  It  is  stringy 
and  in  the  backbone  the  strings  run  in  well-defined 
bundles,  much  as  fifty  independent  wires  are  bound 
together  in  a  leaden  tube  on  entering  a  telephone 
exchange.  Having  more  space  in  the  brain  they  are 
spread  out  and  crossed  and  interlaced  in  all  con- 
ceivable directions  until  they  look  under  the  micro- 
scope like  nothing  so  much  as  an  infinitely  fine  and 
infinitely  diversified  network  of  lace.  Then,  too, 
there  is  another  reason  why  they  should  be  differ- 
ently arranged  in  the  skull.  In  the  spinal  column 
they  are  chiefly  conducting  wires  running  to  and 
from  the  brain;  but  the  brain  is  (as  has  more  than 
once  been  said,  because  the  likeness  is  inescapable) 
like  a  telephone  exchange.  There  is  one  important 
difiference,  however,  between  a  nerve  and  a  telephone 
wire — the  wire  is  inert,  but  the  nerve-fiber  is  not. 
It  is  alive  in  every  part,  and  not  only  alive  but  every 
part  of  it  is,  so  to  speak,  a  battery,  so  that  a  sens- 
ory impulse  is  not  only  carried  but  reinforced  as  it 
is  carried  along  to  the  brain. 

Like  the  tissues  of  all  other  living  things,  the 
nervous  system  is  built  up  of  cells,  only  the  cells 
are  not  just  what  one  might  expect  from  a  study 
of  the  vegetable,  or  other  parts  of  the  animal  or- 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  85 

ganism.  When  we  think  of  a  cell  the  image  of  some- 
thing like  the  cells  made  by  bees  for  the  secretion  of 
their  honey  comes  into  mind.  Such  a  conception  may 
do  for  the  sacs  of  irregular  shape  which  form  the 
structural  units  of  other  parts  of  the  human  body  and 
other  bodies,  but  it  would  be  entirely  misleading 
so  far  as  the  nervous  system  is  concerned.  In  the 
nervous  system,  leaving  out  of  count  the  purely- 
subsidiary  blood  vessels,  lymphatics  and  connective 
tissue  which  nourish  and  support  them,  the  nerve 
cells  are  sometimes  quite  lengthy  bodies  resembling 
a  string  which  has  been  frayed  out  at  both  ends. 
Somew^here  along  that  string  there  is  a  thickened 
part  which  is  known  as  the  nucleus  or  cell-body. 
Through  it  its  parts  seem  to  receive  nourishm'ent ; 
apart  from  it  they  die.  Sometimes  the  string  is  very 
short,  may  be  an  eighth  of  an  inch  in  length ;  again 
it  is  a  yard  long.  From  the  thickened  part  or  cell- 
body,  the  string  goes  in  two  directions.  One  sec- 
tion is  longer  than  the  other;  it  diminishes  in  size 
slowly  and  throws  off  a  branch  at  odd  intervals 
till  it  reaches  the  frayed-out  end.  That  part  is 
called  the  axis-cylinder  process,  or  for  short,  the 
neuraxon  or  axone.  The  section  of  the  string  on 
the  other  side  of  the  cell-body  or  nucleus  is  much 
shorter.  It  gets  rapidly  smaller  and  branches  again 
and  again  till  we  have  something  very  like  a  peach 
or  apple  tree.  On  this  side  of  the  cell-body  there 
may  be  more  than  one  such  piece  of  the  string,  and 
with  their  branches  they  are  called  the  dendritic 
processes  or  dendrites.  The  branches  from  the  ax- 
one are  called  collaterals,  and  the  frayed-out  ends 
are  called  the  terminal  arborization,  the  likeness  to 
the  tree  having  been  particularly  strong  in  the  mind 
of  one  of  the  earliest  observers.  Sometimes,  though, 
the  processes  end  in  discs  or  plates.  No  collateral, 
no  neurone,  no  dendritic  process  is  isolated.    Each 


86  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

one  is  connected  with  contiguous  fibers,  not  or- 
ganically but  as  one  wire  might  touch  another  to 
form  a  contact  and  complete  the  circuit ;  and  so, 
theoretically  at  least,  every  part  of  the  brain  is  in 
connection  with  every  other  part,  associative,  sen- 
sory or  motor. 

The  longer,  or  axis  cylinder  process,  acquires,  as 
the  body  grows  and  education  advances,  a  pro- 
tecting sheath  called  the  medullary  sheath,  and 
often  when  the  fiber  has  to  fare  forth  outside  its 
bony  protection  into  the  softer  parts  of  the  body 
where  it  would  be  more  exposed  to  injury,  it  ac- 
quires on  top  of  that  one  another  sheath,  called  after 
its  discoverer,  the  sheath  of  Schwann. 

So  much  for  the  structure  of  the  nerve  cell.  A 
queer-looking  cell  it  is  but  divinely  well  adapted  to 
the  lofty  part  it  has  to  play  in  the  economy  of  life, 
for  there  is  not  less  difference  between  the  nerve 
cells  and  other  cells  in  the  body  than  there  is  be- 
tween the  function  of  the  nervous  system  and  that 
of  the  circulatory,  respiratory  or  digestive  systems. 
It  controls  them  all  if  it  does  in  turn  depend  on 
them. 

Like  all  the  other  tissues  of  the  body  the  nerve 
substance  has  the  power  of  taking  up  from  the  blood 
whatever  it  needs  to  build  itself  and  to  keep  itself 
in  repair;  but  in  addition  to  these  powers  it  is  dis- 
tinguished by  certain  other  remarkable  qualities 
which  are  peculiar  to  itself.  One  of  these  is  sensi- 
tiveness. And  here  again  we  have  functional  dif- 
ferentiation. The  fibers  which  make  us  sensible  of 
heat  and  cold  are  not  those  which  enable  us  to  hear 
or  see.  Touch  the  optic  nerve  and  we  feel  nothing 
but  we  see  a  light,  as  most  people  whose  knowledge 
of  astronomy  has  been  gained  in  a  roller  skating 
rink  will  be  ready  to  avow.  Touch  the  auditory 
nerve  and  we  feel  no  pain,  but  we  hear  a  sound. 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  87 

the  volume  of  which  is  related  to  the  violence  of 
the  irritation.  And  so  on  with  the  gustatory,  ol- 
factory and  other  nerves  of  special  function.  Widely 
distributed  over  the  body  are  those  sensory  nerves 
which  have  to  do  with  temperature,  touch  and  pain. 
Tiiese  with  their  companions  guard  well  the  citadel 
of  life,  so  that  we  are  enabled  to  keep  constantly 
in  touch  with  our  environment  and  adjusted  to  its 
changes.  Meyer  distinguishes  sixteen  diflferent 
varieties  of  sensation.  Were  it  not  for  these  mar- 
vellous guides  and  monitors  we  should  not  last  long, 
and  in  fact,  were  it  not  for  them,  if  we  did  manage 
to  live  it  would  be  a  mere  existence  for  we  should 
be  without  ideas  and  without  enjoyment,  mere  bits 
of  animated  clay.  The  tutors  of  the  mind  are  those 
impressions  which  stream  into  our  consciousness 
over  the  sensory  wires  without  one  second's  cessa- 
tion from  the  moment  of  waking  till  long  after  we 
close  our  eyes  to  sleep  at  night.  Yes,  even  into  our 
shnnbers  they  pursue  us  sometimes,  as  when  on  a 
chilly  night,  the  covering  off  our  poor  little  feet, 
we  dream  that  some  powerful  enemy  is  holding  us 
down  in  a  snowbank  with  intent  of  freezing  us  to 
death ;  or  the  cook  rattling  and  slamming  the  fur- 
nace at  an  unchristian  hour  of  the  morning,  as  only 
graceless  cooks  know  how  to  do,  makes  us  dream 
we  have  found  employment  in  a  stamp  mill  or  a 
box  factory. 

A  second  functional  characteristic  of  the  nerve 
fiber  is  that  whenever  an  irritation,  stimulation  or 
excitement  is  stirred  up  at  one  end  of  it,  a  similar 
disturbance  is  immediately  caused  at  the  other  end. 
That  is,  the  nerve  has  the  power  of  transmitting 
its  excitement  throughout  its  length  and  on  to  other 
fibers  connected  with  it.  Often  the  excitement  is 
so  small  that  we  are  not  conscious  of  it,  but  never- 
theless it  is  there  as  the  delicate  instruments  of  the 


88  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

laboratory  clearly  show,  and  what  is  more,  these 
subconscious  stimulations  are  often  found  to  be 
humble  servitors  of  some  more  dignified  conscious 
activity  that  is  going  on,  as  when  for  example  it  is 
not  for  nothing  a  man  without  knowing  it  clenches 
his  teeth,  contracts  his  eyebrows  and  grunts,  on 
tackling  a  lift  which  he  thinks  may  be  if  anything 
a  little  beyond  him.  In  fact,  his  very  scalp  moves 
helpfully  in  the  effort. 

The  third  peculiarity  of  the  nervous  system  is 
that  these  living  wires  which  transmit  the  impres- 
sions that  come  to  them  are  essentially  modifiable. 
They  "grow  to  the  modes  in  which  they  are  exer- 
cised," and  in  the  most  uncanny  way  imaginable 
they  learn  to  form  and  break  connections  among 
themselves,  in  the  interests  of  the  preservation  of 
the  individual.  The  three-year-old  who  is  to-day 
attracted  so  strongly  by  the  buzz-saw  that  he  gets 
his  fingers  in  it,  w^ill,  when  he  hears  that  same  buzz 
to-morrow  be  seen  to  make  tracks  in  the  direction 
of  the  next  county. 

Neurologists  tell  us  that  these  nerve  cells  (don't 
forget  the  elongated  shape  of  them)  are  thus  of 
three  kinds  (a)  sensory  or  environment  cells,  bear- 
ing impulses  or  messages  to  the  brain;  (b)  motor 
or  muscular  contraction  cells,  which  send  out  im- 
pulses or  orders  to  the  muscles,  and  (c)  associative 
or  connective  cells,  the  "central"  of  the  brain,  by 
which  incoming  sensory  impulses  are  transformed 
into  outgoing  motor  impulses  destined  to  move 
some  muscular  fiber  in  muscle  or  gland,  as  good 
soldiers  are  moved  at  the  word  of  command. 

The  discovery  of  these  association  cells  and  their 
approximate  location  in  the  center  of  the  brain 
was  one  of  the  greatest  triumphs  of  modern  psy- 
chology. What  was  conjectured  and  postulated  be- 
fore now   became   verifiable   and   more   exact   as   a, 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  89 

basis  of  knowledge  and  further  investigation.  In 
that  large  group  of  neurones  or  cells  which  consti- 
tutes at  once  the  storehouse  and  the  clearing-house 
of  human  life,  lies  the  key  to  the  solution  of  our 
problem  in  ethical  education  and  the  reason  for 
our  humiliating  failures  in  the  past.  As  Prof.  Thorn- 
dyke,  of  Columbia  University,  says:  "The  bulk 
of  the  brain  is  given  up  to  these  connecting  cells 
and  the  more  important  part  of  the  work  of  the 
nervous  system  is  the  work,  not  of  receiving  stimuli 
from  sensitive  parts  of  the  body,  nor  of  discharging 
stimuli  to  the  muscles,  but  of  turning  stimulus  into 
discharge,  connecting  outgo  properly  with  income, 
suiting  expression  to  impression,  action  to  circum- 
stances. Counting  fifty  a  minute,  it  would  take  a 
man  working  twelve  hours  a  day  over  two  hundred 
years  to  merely  count  the  nerve  cells  of  one  man." 

Mention  has  been  made  in  the  foregoing  of  reflex 
action.  A  muscular  reflex  action  "is  the  result  of  a 
peripheral  stimulation  reaching  motor  spinal  cen- 
ters and  thence  centrifugally  manifest  in  a  reaction. 
Thus  in  the  pupil  the  stimulation  caused  by  light 
falling  on  the  retina  travels  by  the  sensory  limb  of 
the  reflex  arc  to  the  medullary  center  and  there 
calls  forth  energy  which  flows  down  the  motor  limb 
and  causes  pupillary  contraction."  Everyone  knows 
the  blinking  and  squinting  that  follow  when  we  step 
out  of  darkness  into  a  very  bright  light.  Now  the 
body  is  full  of  such  unconscious  and  irrepressible 
actions  as  that.  For  instance,  we  know  what  is 
going  to  happen  when  some  villain  sprinkles  red 
pepper  on  the  hot  stove.  That  irritation  of  the 
outward  ends  of  the  olfactory  nerve  produces,  in 
spite  of  all  we  can  do,  a  paroxysm  of  the  respiratory 
tract  which  we  call  a  sneeze.  It  is  nature's  prompt 
effort  to  expel  the  possibly  dangerous  intruder  from 
(he  sacred  temple  of  aeration  on  which  life  depends. 


,90  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

Coughing  is  the  reflex  action  consequent  upon  the 
irritation  of  another  nerve,  and  its  response  comes 
back  swiftly  to  another  set  of  muscles  which  quickly- 
clear  the  precious  bronchial  tubes  of  the  gathering 
phlegm.  Irritate  still  another  nerve  with  a  dose 
of  mustard  and  water,  ipecac,  or  atro-morphine,  and 
the  response  is  felt  immediately  in  violent  vomiting. 
Other  reflexes  there  are  which  have  not  such  a 
direct  bearing  on  the  preservation  of  life  perhaps, 
but  which  are  yet  truly  reflex  actions.  For  example, 
snoring.  We  could  do  very  well  without  that. 
"Spittin'  an'  gaggin' ''  to  use  Eben  Holden's  expres- 
sion ;  sighing  like  a  furnace,  sobbing,  blushing,  pal- 
lor, snuffling,  tickling,  tasting  and  sniffing  are  other 
illustrations  of  the  same  thing. 

In  fact,  moment  by  moment  we  are  dependent  on 
reflex  action  for  our  very  lives.  The  beating  of  the 
heart,  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  the  assimilation 
of  our  foovl  and  all  the  marvellous  details  of  elimina- 
tion, waste  and  repair,  depend  upon  an  elaborate 
and  balanced  adjustment  of  reflexes,  according  to 
the  gentle  and  predetermined  mutual  interaction 
of  a  vast  complex  of  nerves,  each  doing  its  own 
particular  work  so  quietly,  swiftly  and  exactly  that 
we  do  not  even  know  they  are  at  work  till  one  of 
them  is  interrupted.  The  vagus  nerve  for  instance, 
controls  the  beating  of  the  heart.  The  latter  most- 
important  organ  is  like  a  race-horse,  all  the  time 
ready  to  run  away  and  dash  itself  and  all  its  ruddy 
connections  to  destruction  at  the  slightest  release 
of  control.  It  is  for  this  reason  the  surgeon  holds 
his  breath  when  he  operates  in  the  region  traversed 
by  the  vagus  nerve.  He  knows  that  one  un- 
fortunate slip  severing  that  white  thread  and  the 
heart  would  be  like  a  hound  out  of  leash,  up  and 
away  to  that  land  toward  which  the  mournful  un- 
dertaker leads  the  way. 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  91 

The  special  business  of  the  vagus  nerve  is  to  keep 
the  heart  down  to  an  even  pace,  and,  if  we  irritate 
it,  instead  of  accelerating  the  pace  of  the  heart  as 
one  might  by  analogy  expect,  we  depress  the  heart's 
action.  The  respiratory  rhythm  affects  the  vaso- 
motor system  of  nerves — those  nerves  threading 
the  velvet  coats  of  the  arteries  to  help  the  pumping 
heart  lift  the  crimson  tide  throughout  the  body ; 
and  in  turn  both  the  vaso-motor  and  the  respiratory 
react  upon  the  vagus  and  the  whole  sympathetic 
system,  so  that  there  is  going  on  within  us  all 
the  time  a  most  elaborate  and  curious  system  of 
automatic  reflexes  from  sensory  nerve  end  to  center, 
and  back  through  motor  nerve  to  muscle,  without 
which  we  should  immediately  have  to  vacate  the 
premises. 

Is  this  clear  then?  Over  the  sixteen  or  more  dis- 
tinct varieties  of  nerve  wires  with  their  millions 
of  branches,  impression  impulses  keep  pouring  into 
the  centers.  In  the  "central"  or  its  branch  offices 
these  impressions  are  handled  and  a  reply  is  in- 
stantly flashed  back  over  another  wire,  the  motor 
nerve,  telling  the  muscles  what  to  do.  That  is  re- 
flex action. 

Now  the  head  office  (no  joke)  for  this  kind  of 
business  is  the  brain  (leaving  out  of  count  of  course 
the  blood  vessels,  lymphatics,  connective  tissue, 
etc.,  in  which  it  rests)  and  the  branch  offices  are 
located  in  the  spinal  cord  and  at  the  top  of  the  spinal 
column  in  the  back  of  the  head.  By  far  the  most 
important  branch  office  is  that  in  the  back  of  the 
head — seat  of  the  quadrigemina,  optic  thalamus,  etc., 
etc.  The  other  centers  are  at  regular  intervals  down 
the  spinal  cord,  where  the  thirty-one  pairs  of  nerve 
bundles  sally  forth  from,  or  return  to  and  enter 
the  backbone,  as  one  chooses  to  look  at  it. 

As  in  a  large  business  enterprise  the  central  of- 


92  WHY      THEY      FAIL 

fice  looks  after  the  higher  matters,  policy,  litigation, 
administration  and  so  on,  leaving  to  the  branch 
offices  the  less  important  and  the  well-established 
or  routine ;  and  as  in  that  office  business  is  handed 
over  to  the  subordinate  officials  just  as  rapidly  as 
they  are  able  to  take  it  on  and  handle  it,  so  in  the 
nervous  system  there  goes  on  incessantly,  the  psy- 
chologists and  neurologists  tell  us,  a  delegation  by 
the  brain  to  the  lower  centers  of  the  care  of  a  multi- 
tude of  details  in  order  that  it  may  be  free  to  attend 
to  the  higher  things  of  life,  thought  processes,  shap- 
ing of  life  policies,  the  cerebral  litigations  we  call 
doubts,  questionings,  judgments,  and  so  on.  When 
we  were  babies  we  said  "go  to,  now ;  let  us  walk," 
and  it  took  the  central  office  with  all  hands  busy  and 
keyed-up  to  the  last  thread  of  attention  all  its  time 
to  commandeer  the  muscles  to  that  end.  Now  we 
say,  "Let  us  go  downtown,"  and  the  thought  of 
how  we  are  to  get  there  does  not  so  much  as  once 
enter  out  thoughts  in  the  head  office,  so  completely 
have  the  details  been  handed  over  to  the  offices  be- 
low. The  thought  of  going,  the  word  of  command 
is  enough  to  start  up  all  the  machinery. 

Schrader  illustrated  this  process  when  he  ab- 
stracted the  hemispheres  of  a  frog's  brain  and  found 
it  could  move  of  its  own  accord,  eat  flies  and  bury 
itself  in  the  mud.  Vulpian  found  that  brainless 
carp,  three  days  after  operation,  would  make  di- 
rectly for  food  thrown  into  the  water  in  front  of 
them,  bite  at  a  knotted  cord  and  even  show  a  ten- 
dency to  defend  their  rights  when  menaced  by  other 
fish.  Goltz  experimented  with  dogs,  and  when  he 
had  destroyed  both  hemispheres,  and  practically 
also  the  corpora  striata  and  thalami,  found  the  dog 
lived  for  fifty-one  days  and  was  able  to  stand  and 
walk.    The  lower  centers  had  taken  over  the  task 


WHY      THEY      FAIL  93 

which  once  required  the  directive  action  of  the 
brain  proper. 

Experimental  interference  with  the  brain  hemi- 
spheres of  the  lower  animals  shows  that  it  is  the 
higher  functions  such  as  inhibition,  resourcefulness, 
etc.,  which  are  eliminated  when  the  brain  is  re- 
moved. But  the  subordinate  centers  themselves 
seem  to  have  acquired  a  certain  amount  of  inhibi- 
tory control,  too.  The  brain  itself  has  in  the  highest 
degree  this  power  of  inhibition  as  one  of  its  grand 
prerogatives,  but  when  it  delegates  its  powers  to 
lower  centers  they  seem  to  take  over  something  of 
the  inhibitory  functions  at  the  same  time. 

This  wonderful  and  significant  phase  of  our  ner- 
vous activities  is  beautifully  presented  to  us  in  Prof. 
Mark  Baldwin's  "Hand-Book  of  Psychology"  as 
follows : 

"Of  these  general  statements  the  first  concerns 
what  has  already  been  called  the  integrating  func- 
tion of  nerve  centers.  By  this  is  meant  the  build- 
ing up  of  a  center  to  greater  complexity  of  structure 
through  new  stimulations.  It  takes  place  by  reason 
of  the  extreme  plasticity  of  the  nervous  elements 
in  taking  on  arrangements  suited  to  more  habitual 
and,  at  the  same  time  more  complex,  reactions. 
The  center  becomes  the  theater  of  multiple  and 
conflicting  stimulations;  its  reaction  is  the  outcome 
of  a  warfare  of  interests,  and  the  pathway  of  dis- 
charge is  a  line  of  conduction  most  favorable  to 
future  similar  outbursts.  A  center  gains  by  such 
complex  activities  in  two  ways;  first  its  habitual 
reactions  become  a  rock-bed  or  layer  of  elements, 
so  to  speak,  of  fixed  function  issuing  in  established 
paths  of  least  resistance ;  and  second,  the  center 
grows,  gaining  new  and  more  mobile  elements,  and 
responding  to  more  complex  and  difficult  motor  in- 
tentions.    For  example  the  center  for  the  move- 


94  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

ment  of  the  hands  is  educated  from  the  early,  pain- 
ful lessons  of  the  baby's  finger  movements  to  the 
delicate  and  rapid  touch  of  the  skilled  musician. 
Not  only  has  the  center  become  fixed  and  auto- 
matic for  movements  at  first  painfully  learned,  but 
it  has  become  educated  by  learning-,  so  that  it 
acquires  new^  combinations  more  easily.  This  two- 
fold growth  becomes  the  basis  of  the  sentient  ap- 
paratus into  centers  and  ganglia.  The  'rock-bed' 
elements,  so-called,  fall  into  fixed  ganglionic  con- 
nections, and  the  new  and  free  cells  take  up  the 
higher  function,  only  in  their  turn  to  become 
'fixed'  by  habit  and  to  give  place  to  other  and 
yet  more  complex  combinations.  This  integrating 
process  is  what  gives  the  hierarchal  order  to  the 
system  and  throws  the  law  of  development  into 
fine  relief.  .  .  .  This  principle  of  integration 
covers  in  its  two  aspects,  the  law  of  growth  in  liv- 
ing tissue  in  general.  Exercise  tends  always  both 
to  enlarge  and  to  consolidate  an  organ.  A  muscle 
becomes  more  ready  and  exact,  as  well  as  larger 
and  more  capable  with  frequent  use,  and  the  same 
application  has  been  made  of  the  principle  to 
mental  functions,  notably  to  the  memory.  The 
striking  peculiarity  of  the  case  in  regard  to  nervous 
activities  is  the  excessively  detailed  differentiations 
it  works;  we  have  here  not  only  the  rise  of  new 
centers  from  old  ones,  but  organic  pathways  de- 
veloped between  them  and  a  progressive  advance 
secured  throughout  the  system,  from  the  spinal 
ganglia  up  to  the  cerebral  cortex. 

"Each  of  the  segments  of  the  spinal  cord  has  its 
own  reactions  apart  from  its  brain  connection.  In- 
deed, reflex  actions  are  most  perfect  and  pure  when 
cues  in  the  form  of  attention  are  not  directed  to  the 
movements.  These  facts  tend  to  throw  reflexes 
rather  on  the  side  of  the  downward  growth  spoken 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  95 

of  and  assimilate  them  to  automatic  reactions. 
The  well-known  phenomena  presented  by  a  brain- 
less frog  illustrates  pure  reflexes  very  clearly. 

''The  downward  growth  appears  in  that  many  of 
our  reflexes  are  acquired  from  habit  and  repetition. 
Motor  processes  at  first  difficult  and  simple,  are 
welded  together  in  complex  masses,  and  the  whole 
becomes  spontaneous  and  reflex.  The  case  is  cited 
of  a  musician  who  was  seized  with  an  epileptic  at- 
tack in  the  midst  of  an  orchestral  performance  and 
continued  to  play  the  measure  quite  correctly  while 
in  a  state  of  apparently  quite  complete  unconscious- 
ness. This  is  only  an  exaggerated  case  of  common 
experience  in  walking,  writing,  etc.  It  represents 
from  the  standpoint  of  body,  the  motor  organiza- 
tion in  consciousness  already  pointed  out  under  the 
head  of  'motor  intuition.'  Just  as  a  number  of 
single  experiences  of  movement  become  merged 
in  a  single  idea  of  the  whole,  and  the  impulse  to 
begin  the  combination  is  sufficient  to  secure  the 
performance  of  all  the  details,  so  single  elementary 
nervous  reactions  become  integrated  in  a  compound 
reflex. 

"Negative  reaction  or  inhibition.  Under  the  name 
of  inhibition  or  arrest,  a  class  of  phenomena  is  in- 
cluded which  are,  as  far  as  our  knowledge  goes, 
peculiar  to  nervous  activities.  Every  positive  re- 
action is  accompanied  by  a  reverse  wave,  an  arrest, 
so  to  speak,  of  its  full  effect.  It  is  analogous  to  a 
negative  force  acting  to  counteract  and  neutralize 
the  outgoing  discharge.  It  seems  to  take  place  in 
the  center.  The  effective  force  of  a  reaction,  there- 
fore, is  always  less  by  the  amount  of  the  nervous 
arrest.  This  neutralizing  factor  has  been  measured 
in  certain  conditions  of  nerve  reaction. 

(a)  "The  kind  of  reaction  showing  least  arrest 
is  the  reflex;  and  in  general  the  more  consolidated 


96  WHY.     THEY     FAIL 

a  nerve  tract  or  center,  the  less  exhibition  do  we 
discover  of  the  reverse  wave.  This  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  inhibition  is  not  a  phenomenon  at- 
taching to  'paths  of  least  resistance'  and  does  not 
belong  on  the  side  of  so-called  'downward'  growth. 

(b)  "Inhibition  is  at  its  maximum  in  reactions 
which  involve  centers  of  more  complex  activity. 
The  phenomena  of  voluntary  control — inhibition 
by  the  will — are  in  evidence  here,  however  we 
may  construe  the  will.  For  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  we  must  find  a  mechanical  basis  for 
muscular  control  even  though  we  advocate  a  di- 
rective and  selective  function  of  the  will. 

(c)  "Hence  inhibition  is  a  concomitant  of  insta- 
bility and  complexity  of  nervous  tissue;  it  belongs 
on  the  side  of  the  "upward"  growth  of  the  sys- 
tem. .  .  .  This  general  view  is  also  sustained 
by  the  fact  now  established  that  each  segmental 
reflex  in  the  spinal  cord  is  subject  to  inhibition 
from  the  higher  segments  and  in  turn  inhibits  those 
lower  down.  The  reflexes  of  a  frog's  legs  immersed 
in  dilute  acid  are  more  rapid  and  violent  after  the 
hemispheres  have  been  removed — showing  the 
normal  inhibitive  function  of  the  cortex;  and  the 
reflexes  of  a  lizard's  tail  have  been  shown  to  in- 
crease in  vigor  as  the  segments  of  the  spinal  cord 
are  successively  removed." 

And  similarly  also  in  the  case  of  lesions  of  the 
motor  zone  of  the  cortex  (central  office)  in  man. 

Now  the  essential  thing  about  a  reflex  action  is 
that  something  occurs  in  the  nerve  center  whereby 
the  impulse  coming  in  through  the  sensory  nerve 
is  transformed  into  an  impulse  or  order  going  out- 
ward to  gland  or  muscle.  The  pivotal  transaction 
which  results  in  such  a  transformation  is  called 
by  the  specialists  a  "motor  discharge."  Mark  well 
the  word.     For  the  lack  of  it  in  our  dictionaries  of 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  97 

religious  education,  society  goes  haltingly  as  did 
the  patriarch  Jacob  when  the  Angel  touched  his 
sciatic  nerve  long  ago.  We  may  therefore  adopt  the 
term  and  use  it  as  being  the  essential  thing  about  a 
reflex  so  far  as  this  discussion  is  concerned. 

So  profoundly,  so  truly  at  the  heart  of  things 
lies  this  great  fact  of  reflex  action  in  relation  to 
the  reception  of  impressions  from  without  that 
psychologists  now  affirm  "all  consciousness  leads 
to  action."  That  is,  every  thought  zve  think 
struggles  to  break  out  into  a  complementary  action. 
And  it  generally  succeeds.  If  it  does  not  get 
a  right  channel  of  discharge,  it  will  discharge 
through  a  wrong  one.  Its  influence  will  be 
felt  somewhere.  We  may  not  be  at  all  conscious 
of  it,  yet  it  is  there.  Prof.  Sanford  will  put  his  little 
instrument  on  your  throat  and  show  you  that  while 
you  are  reading  this  page  silently  in  your  room 
the  muscles  of  the  larynx  are  moving  almost  as 
perceptibly  as  if  you  were  whispering  to  3^our  neigh- 
bor in  church. 

Prof.  Mosso,  an  ingenious  Italian  physiologist, 
has  demonstrated  in  his  laboratory  that  we  can 
think  no  thought,  be  moved  by  no  feeling,  be  in- 
spired by  no  motive  which  does  not  immediately 
result  in  a  motor  discharge  which  is  felt  along 
many  different  avenues,  viz.,  the  pulse  rate,  the  qual- 
ity of  the  heart  beat,  the  blood  pressure  and  its 
distribution  in  the  body,  the  glandular  secretions, 
the  respiration  and  the  muscular  tension.  This  is 
not  supposition;  it  is  a  fact  shown  daily  in  the 
psychological  laboratories  of  a  hundred  well- 
equipped  universities,  by  means  of  a  score  of  deli- 
cate instruments  measuring  to  ten-thousandths  of 
an  inch  in  space  and  thousandths  of  a  second  in 
time. 

In  this  inveterate  tendency  of  every  thought  to 


98  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

reproduce  itself  in  a  corresponding  action  we  have 
the  sufficient  explanation  of  the  miraculous  cures 
wrought  by  Christian  Scientists,  notwithstanding 
its  fantastic  jumble  of  phrases  in  "Science  and 
Health."  No  wonder  Mark  Twain  said  that  book 
reminded  him  of  "a  dictionary  with  the  colic."  Im- 
manuel  movement,  Saint's  bones,  "absent  healers," 
et  id  onme  genera  depend  for  what  success  they 
may  have  on  that  great  law — a  law  which,  by  the 
way,  is  like  water  and  air,  as  free  to  the  atheist 
as  to  the  believer,  as  many  of  the  former  have 
proved  by  their  use  of  it  in  clinics,  regular  and 
otherwise. 

If  you  don't  believe  that  the  secretions  are  al- 
fected  by  a  thought,  nor  the  muscles,  shut  your 
eyes  and  imagine  someone  is  squeezing  a  lemon 
into  your  mouth  and  see  if  the  parotid  and  submax- 
illary glands  do  not  begin  work  and  ''make  your 
mouth  water,"  Ordinarily  they  are  excited  to  ac- 
tion only  by  the  presence  of  food  in  the  mouth. 
Or  ask  yourself  what  would  happen  if  just  as  you 
were  sitting  down  to  a  banquet  with  the  most  wolf- 
ish appetite  you  ever  had,  a  telegram  was  handed 
you  announcing  the  death  of  your  dearest.  That 
thought  would  reach  your  stomach  via  the  pneumo- 
gastric  nerve  before  you  had  time  to  reach  the  sig- 
nature in  your  reading.  Or,  again,  stand  up,  shut 
your  eyes  and  concentrate  your  attention  on  the 
sensation  of  falling  backward,  at  the  same  time  let- 
ting yourself  go,  and  see  if  a  hundred  muscles  are 
not  constrained  to  action  in  a  moment  in  response 
to  that  thought.  Babies  have  been  poisoned  at 
the  breast  because  their  mothers  did  not  know  that 
it  is  possible  for  anger  to  change  to  poison  even  the 
nutritive  secretions  of  the  body.  "Melancholia" 
is,  etymologically,  black  bile. 

Drug  healing  gets  the  reflex  without  the  thought 


WHZ     TMEY.     FAIL  99 

and  brings  us  down  as  by  a  slung  shot,  and  the 
doctor's  superiority  over  the  rest  of  us  lies  chiefly 
in  that  he  knows  what  part  of  the  nervous  system 
this,  that,  or  the  other  drug  will  irritate,  for  these 
drugs  seem  to  be  highly  selective.  One  will  fly 
at  the  vagus,  another  at  the  pneumogastric,  another 
at  the  vaso-motor  nerves,  and  so  on.  But  old  practi- 
tioners get  tired  of  these  bludgeon  methods,  except 
in  emergency  cases,  and  more  and  more  come  to 
think  in  pensive  moments  about  what  lies  behind 
that  bread  pill,  or  that  "jag"  of  water  instead  of 
the  regulation  "eighth"  of  morphia,  that  it  should 
induce  the  blessed  oblivion  of  sleep.  Frpsh  air,  rest, 
proper  food,  cleanliness  and  suggestive  therapeutics, 
the  marvellous  power  of  mind  over  matter;  of 
thoughts  to  produce  internal  motor  discharges  and 
physiological  reflexes — of  fear  to  contract  and  hope 
to  expand,  or  anger  that  poisons  in  the  human 
body — all  this  inclines  many  to  beHeve  that  in  fifty, 
or  one  hundred  years  people  will  have  attained  such 
a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  life  as  will  enable  them 
to  do  what  we  would  often  long  to  do — "throw 
physic  to  the  dogs."  "We  would  if  we  dast,  but 
we  dassent." 

So  then  every  thought  from  within  or  impression 
from  without  is  "handled"  promptly  in  the  central 
oflice — thrown  off,  as  it  were,  down  one  line  or  an- 
other as  promptly  as  ever  pitcher  sent  the  ball  to 
first  base  in  the  ninth  inning  with  two  out  and 
an  even  score.  From  this  there  is  no  escape,  and 
the  finding  or  making  the  right  path  of  discharge 
is  the  main  thing  in  education.  Says  Prof.  James, 
of  Harvard,  whose  monumental  work  "Psychology" 
in  two  large  volumes  will  presently  yield  us  some 
further  light,  "The  currents  once  in  must  find  a 
way  out.  In  getting  out  they  leave  their  traces  in 
the  paths  which  they  take.     The  only  thing  they 


100  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

can  do,  in  short,  is  to  deepen  old  paths  or  to  make 
new  ones;  the  whole  plasticity  of  the  brain  sums 
itself  up  in  two  words  when  we  call  it  an  organ  in 
which  currents  pouring  in  from  the  sense-organs 
make  with  extreme  facility  paths  which  do  not 
easily  disappear." 

Now  it  is  just  at  this  point  of  finding  the  proper 
channels  of  discharge  that  we  have  shown  the  in- 
tellectual "blind  spot."  We  have  ignored  it  almost 
wholly  in  our  ethical  education,  not  so  much  in 
our  "secular"  education  and  not  at  all,  one  may 
say,  in  our  practical  education.  That  is,  in  our 
religious  education  as  ministered  in  the  home,  the 
Church  and  the  Sunday-school,  we  have  pinned  our 
faith  to  the  first  half  of  this  process  and  let  the 
other  slide.  We  have  devoted  all  our  time  to  creat- 
ing good  impressions  in  Sunday-school  and  pulpit 
and  apparently  cared  not  a  whit  as  to  what  became 
of  them  when  they  were  made.  We  just  trusted 
that  somehow  Providence  would  "bless  the  seed 
sown"  and  make  it  bear  fruit  in  after  years,  for- 
getting that  we  must  not  only  broadcast  the  seed 
but  harrow  it  in,  then  wait  for  God.  Providence 
does  not  usually  do  for  us  what  we  can  do  for  our- 
selves. He  may  provide  a  primer  but  he  certainly 
will  not  learn  the  lesson  for  us ;  he  may  give  us  a 
farm  but  nothing  will  come  of  that  if  we  don't  get 
up  before  breakfast  in  the  morning  and  work  it. 

Look  over  the  Sunday-schools  and  congregations 
of  the  land.  What  a  wealth  of  the  very  noblest  in- 
struction is  there.  What  heartfelt  prayers!  What 
lofty  and  inspiring  songs !  Genuine  too,  whatever 
the  sneering  critic  on  the  street  may  say.  The 
trouble  is  not  there.  The  Church  is  God's  institu- 
tion and  it  still  pleases  God  "by  the  foolishness  of 
preaching  to  save  them  that  believe."  The  Sunday- 
school  as  an  organization,  numerically  and  in  the 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  101 

elaborate  and  painstaking  care  with  which  it  is 
carried  on,  has  no  parallel  in  the  world,  the  Church 
alone  excepted.  To  think  on  the  multitudes  of  tired 
men  and  women  who  study  to  prepare  their  lessons 
and  then  drag  their  wearied  bodies  out  to  the  ser- 
vice of  children  whom  they  would  never  otherwise 
have  known ;  and  to  see  them  follow  those  children 
of  other  people  through  the  week  with  prayer  and 
anxious  solicitude,  without  thought  of  pecuniary 
remuneration,  while  parents  and  their  Epicurean 
detractors  steep  their  senses  in  slumber  or  loll 
dawdling  in  hammocks  slung  in  the  shadiest  cor- 
ner of  the  veranda,  is  a  sight  calculated  to  help 
restore  one's  faith  in  God  and  human  nature. 

And  their  work  is,  on  the  whole,  very  well  done 
too.  The  weakness  is  not  there.  It  is  not  that 
we  need  to  cease  what  we  have  been  doing  or  to 
blame  ourselves  for  it.  Our  sin  is  not  one  of  com- 
mission, but  of  omission.  What  the  Sunday-schools 
and  pulpits  have  been  doing  is  their  own  proper 
work ;  but  it  is  only  a  part  of  it,  and  we  have  mis- 
taken the  part  of  education  for  the  whole,  that  is 
all. 

But  this  business  of  creating  good  impressions  con- 
tinuously and  stopping  there,  is,  as  it  happens,  by 
the  constitution  of  nature,  which  is  the  fiat  of  God, 
an  extremely  vicious  procedure.  It  produces  a  lop- 
sided brain  and  it  occasions  an  enormous  waste. 
It  is  because  of  these  two  items  that  about  three- 
fourths  or  two-thirds  of  our  teaching  and  preaching 
never  accomplishes  anything — a  fact  which  causes 
the  enemies  of  the  Lord  to  blaspheme. 

Those  impression  cells  of  emotion  and  knowledge 
have  grown  to  their  normal  capacity  in  a  reasonable 
average  of  the  cases.  People  brought  up  in  church 
and  Sunday-school  do  not  fall  down  ethically  be- 
cause  they   do   not   know   what   is    right   in   dicker 


103  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

and  bargain ;  they  fall  down  because  knowing,  they 
cannot  somehow  do  it  when  it  comes  to  the  scratch, 
any  more  than  they  can  paint  a  portrait  of  the 
mayor,  and  for  the  very  same  reason,  because  they 
have  never  done  it,  or  the  like  of  it.  That  is, 
because  in  their  brains  there  have  never  taken  place 
the  correlative  nervous  discharges  of  the  emotion 
into  the  act  that  should  go  with  it.  Hence  it  is 
that  we  have  produced  a  race  of  men  who  are 
good  in  a  prayer  meeting,  but  bad  in  a  horse  trade, 
and  marvels  of  beneficence  with  the  million  they 
haven't  got,  but  misers  with  the  sou  they  have. 

What  then  has  become  of  the  nervous  impulses 
created  by  those  good  impressions?  Alas,  they  have 
been  "drained  off"  into  unproductive  channels. 
Nay,  worse — they  have  not  only  been  drained  off 
unproductively,  but  what  is  worse,  they  have  made 
it  easy,  not  to  say  imperative,  that  every  other  simi- 
lar good  impression  following  shall  run  into  the 
same  unproductive  channels.  That  is  why  the 
preacher's  sermon,  be  it  never  so  powerful,  produces 
so  little  effect  on  the  conduct  of  the  man  before 
him.  It  seems  to  have  no  "clutch."  He  sheds  it 
as  naturally  as  a  duck  sheds  water,  and  he  is  not 
to  blame  any  more  than  the  duck  or  the  faithful 
minister  who  has  just  spoken.  The  fault  is  in  the 
early  education  we  gave  him.  We  have  educated 
him  to  shed  his  good  impressions  or  impulses ;  we 
have  developed  the  wrong  neurones  in  his  brain, 
and  so  there  he  is.  As  we  made  him  so  we  have 
him. 

Hear  the  great  psychologist  of  Cambridge  speak- 
ing to  this  point.  It  is  the  voice  of  a  scientist  who 
yet  has  the  heart  of  a  man,  and  he  is  speaking  of 
what  he  calls  "the  obstructed  will." 

"Those  ideas,  objects,  considerations,  which  (in 
these  lethargic  states)    fail  to  get  to  the  will,   fail 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  103 

to  draw  blood,  seem,  in  so  far  forth,  distant  and 
unreal.    The  connection  of  the  reality  of  things  with 
their   effectiveness   as   motives    is   a   tale    that    has 
never  yet  been  fully  told.     The  moral  tragedy  of 
human  life  comes  almost  wholly  from  the  fact  that 
the   link   is   ruptured   which   normally   should   hold 
between  vision  of  the  truth  and  action,  and  that  this 
pungent  sense  of  effective   reality  will  not  attach 
to  certain  ideas.    Men  do  not  dift'er  so  much  in  their 
mere  feelings  and   conceptions.     Their  notions   of 
possibility  and  their  ideals  are  not  as  far  apart  as 
might  be   argued   from   their   differing  fates.     No 
class  of  them  have  better  sentiments  or  feel  more 
constantly  the  dift'erence  between  the  higher  and  the 
lower  path  in  life,  than  the  hopeless  failures,  the 
sentimentalists,   the   drunkards,   the   schemers,  the 
"dead-beats"  whose  life  is  one  long  contradiction 
between  knowledge  and  action,  and  who,  with  full 
command  of  theory,  never  get  to  holding  their  limp 
characters  erect.     No  one  eats  of  the  fruit  of  the 
tree   of   knowledge   as   they   do ;   as    far   as   moral 
insight  goes,  in  comparison  with  them  the  orderly 
and  prosperous  Philistines  whom  they  scandalize, 
are  sucking  babes.    And  yet  their  moral  knowledge 
always  there  rumbling  and  grumbling  in  the  back- 
ground— discerning,  commenting,  protesting,  long- 
ing,  half  resolving — never  wholly  resolves,   never 
gets  its  voice  out  of  the  minor  into  the  major  key, 
or  its  speech  out  of  the  subjunctive  mood  into  the 
imperative  mood,  never  breaks  the  spell,  never  takes 
the  helm   into  its   hands.      In  such   characters   as 
Rousseau  and  Restif  it  would  seem  as  if  the  lower 
motives  had  all  the  impulsive  efficacy  in  their  hands. 
Like  trains  with  the  right  of  way,  they  retain  an  ex- 
clusive possession  of  the  track.     The  more  ideal 
motives  exist  alongside  of  them  in  profusion,  but 
they  never  get  switched  on  and  the  man's  conduct 


104  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

is  no  more  influenced  by  them  than  an  express  train 
is  influenced  by  a  wayfarer  standing  by  the  roadside 
and  calling  to  be  taken  aboard.  They  are  an  inert 
accompaniment  to  the  end  of  time;  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  inward  hollowness  that  accrues  from 
habitually  seeing  the  better  only  to  do  the  worse, 
is  one  of  the  saddest  feelings  one  can  bear  with  him 
through  this  vale  of  tears." 

In  our  practical  education  in  its  two  phases,  the 
intellectual  and  the  manual,  we  have  not  dared  to 
despise  this  great,  fundamental,  indispensable  prin- 
ciple, reflex  action,  or  expression.  Not  for  a  minute. 
We  insist  on  a  motor  discharge  directly  related  to 
the  instruction  given.  We  make  it  our  business  to 
furnish  the  opportunity.  In  our  day-schools,  so  far 
as  the  intellectual  training  of  the  children  is  con- 
cerned, no  teacher  could  hold  her  situation  a  week 
if  she  did  not  find  ways  for  the  children  to  give  out 
what  she  had  just  rammed  in.  She  may  or  may 
not  be  able  to  tell  you  the  psychological  reason  for 
it,  but  she  feels  and  knows  that  the  methods  of  the 
average  Sunday-school  would  never  get  her  little 
charges  anywhere.  However  church-people  may 
slight  the  word,  she  feels  "in  her  bones"  that  Prof. 
James  knows  what  he  is  talking  about  in  his  "Talks 
to  Teachers  on  Psychology." 

At  the  request  of  the  Corporation  of  Harvard 
University,  Prof.  James  a  few  years  ago  addressed 
the  teachers  of  Cambridge  on  psychology  as  it  re- 
lates itself  to  their  daily  work.  In  the  course  of 
his  address  on  "The  Necessity  of  Reactions"  he  took 
occasion  to  lay  down  what  he  considered  "the  one 
general  aphorism  which  ought  by  logical  right  to 
dominate  the  entire  conduct  of  the  teacher  in  the 
class-room" — "the  great  maxim  which  the  teacher 
ought  never  to  forget."  And  what  is  this  great, 
fundamental  law  of  the  profession  which  the  teacher 


WHY     THEY     F'AIL  105 

of  our  day  schools  must  never,  under  any  circum- 
stances forget,  if  she  would  do  her  work  as  a 
teacher?  He  puts  it  in  italics,  that  they  may  not 
forget.  Would  that  we  might  have  it  on  the  wall 
of  every  Sunday-school  in  letters  a  yard  long,  so 
that  no  leader  could  miss  it.    This  is  it: 

"No  reception  without  reaction,  no  impression  with- 
out correlative  expression." 

Now  what  does  he  mean  by  that?  This  we  take 
it.  He  would  say  something  like  this.  You  are 
a  teacher.  As  you  stand  there  before  that  class 
remember  that  each  of  those  little  vulgar  fractions 
6i  humanity  is  simply  a  bundle  of  reactions.  The 
boy's  optic  nerve  is  reacting  all  the  time  to  the 
stimulus  from  the  sentence  on  the  board,  the  colors 
of  your  dress,  the  light  in  your  eye,  the  kindli- 
ness of  your  smile  or  the  frown  on  your  brow: 
his  auditory  nerve  is  reacting  to  the  sound  of 
your  voice,  to  the  other  voices,  to  the  noises  on  the 
street,  to  the  buzz  of  the  blue-bottle  fly  he  holds 
prisoner  in  his  hand ;  his  olfactory  is  gladly  recog- 
nizing the  scent  of  a  toothsome  apple  under  the 
desk,  or  the  odors  of  flowers  in  a  neighboring  win- 
dow; his  sensory  nerves  report  a  very  high  reading 
where  he  sits  near  the  register ;  also  the  discomfort 
from  the  perspiration  caused  by  a  motor  order  to 
his  sweat  glands  to  open  up,  in  the  interest  of  his 
general  well-being,  and  so  on  with  all  his  senses. 

In  addition  to  the  other  impressions  he  is  listen- 
ing to  your  voice.  You  are  trying  to  impress  upon 
his  brain  the  fact  that  the  United  States  once  be- 
longed to  Great  Britain  but  that  they  broke  away, 
and  why  they  broke  away  and  how  they  broke  away. 
Or  being  desirous  of  giving  him  some  idea  of  the 
location  of  the  republic  you  have  told  him  about  its 
shape ;  of  the  peoples  living  on  the  north  and  south 
and  of  the  two  oceans  east  and  west.    You  are  not 


106  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

to  think  your  work  as  a  teacher  is  done  when  you 
have  done  that,  no  matter  how  clearly  and  simply 
you  have  put  it  and  no  matter  how  intently  he 
followed  your  story.  As  a  matter  of  fact  your 
work  as  a  teacher  is  scarcely  half  done.  If  you  are 
to  develop  that  boy's  brain  3^ou  will  have  to  re- 
member that  it  is  not  so  much  what  you  do  as  what 
he  does  that  counts.  You  are  there  mainly  to  di- 
rect him  in  his  doing.  He  must  build  his  own 
brain  under  your  supervision.  If,  therefore,  you  wish 
him  to  incorporate  into  his  own  make-up  what  you 
have  just  given  him  you  must  make  him  tell  you 
that  story  of  the  great  struggle,  in  writing  it  may 
be,  or  verbally,  but  in  his  OAvn  language,  and  you 
must  make  him  draw  a  map  of  this  country  showing 
its  boundaries.  As  he  prints  the  map  on  the  paper 
he  will  automatically  print  it  on  his  own  brain  by 
reflex  action. 

Of  course  Prof.  James  did  not  say  that.  He  did 
not  say  it  because  there  was  no  more  need  of  say- 
ing it  to  that  audience  than  there  would  have  been 
for  his  showing  them  how  to  spell  "cat"  if  he  had 
asked  them  to  write  the  word.  All  that,  however 
timely  it  may  be  for  the  average  Sunday-school 
teacher  (and  it  would  be  timely)  is  but  the  alphabet 
of  the  teacher's  profession.  What  that  prince  of 
psychologists  did  say  to  those  professionals  was 
this.  Would  that  the  words  might  be  written  on 
the  sky  for  all  to  read. 

"An  impression  which  simply  flows  in  at  the 
pupil's  eyes  or  ears,  and  in  no  way  modifies  his 
active  life,  is  an  impression  gone  to  waste.  It  is 
physiologically  incomplete.  It  leaves  no  fruits  be- 
hind it  in  the  way  of  capacity  acquired.  Even  as 
mere  impression  it  fails  to  produce  its  proper  ef- 
fect upon  the  memory:  for,  to  remain  fully  among 
the  acquisitions  of  this  latter  faculty,  it   must  be 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  107 

wrought  into  the  whole  cycle  of  our  operations.  Its 
motor  consequences  are  what  clench  it.  Some  effect 
due  to  it  in  the  way  of  an  activity  must  return  to  the 
mind  in  the  form  of  the  sensation  of  having  acted 
and  connect  itself  with  the  impression." 

And  again.  "Seize  the  very  first  possible  oppor- 
tunity to  act  on  every  resolution  you  make,  and  on 
every  emotional  prompting  yon  may  experience  in 
the  direction  of  the  habits  you  aspire  to  gain."  He 
underlines  those  words  and  then  goes  on.  "It  is  not 
in  the  moment  of  their  forming  but  in  the  moment 
of  their  producing  motor  effects,  that  resolves  and 
aspirations  communicate  the  new  'set'  to  the  brain. 

"No  matter  how  full  a  reservoir  of  maxims  one 
may  possess,  and  no  matter  how  good  one's  senti- 
ments may  be,  if  one  have  not  taken  advantage  of 
every  concrete  opportunity  to  act,  one's  character 
may  remain  entirely  unaffected  for  the  better.  With 
good  intentions  hell  proverbially  is  paved.  .  .  . 
When  a  resolve  or  a  fine  glow  of  feeling  is  allowed 
to  evaporate  without  bearing  practical  fruit  it  is 
worse  than  a  chance  lost;  it  works  so  as  positively 
to  hinder  future  resolutions  and  emotions  from  tak- 
ing the  normal  path  of  discharge.  .  .  .  Don't 
preach  too  much  to  your  pupils  or  abound  in  good 
talk  in  the  abstract.  Lie  in  wait  rather  for  the 
practical  opportunities,  be  prompt  to  seize  those  as 
they  pass,  and  thus  at  one  operation  get  your  pupils 
both  to  think,  to  feel,  and  to  do.  The  strokes  of 
behavior  are  what  give  the  new  set  to  the  character, 
and  work  the  good  habits  into  its  organic  tissue. 
Preaching  and  talking  too  soon  become  an  inef- 
fectual bore." 

All  too  soon,  dear  reader,  as  most  of  us  can  testify 
from  experience.  But  why  is  it  a  bore?  Read  the 
foregoing  once  more — "the  strokes  of  behavior  are 


108  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

what  give  the  new  set  to  the  brain  and  work  the 
good  habits  into  its  organic  tissue." 

"It  is  not  in  the  moment  of  their  forming  but 
in  the  moment  of  their  producing  motor  effects  that 
resolves  and  aspirations  communicate  the  new  'set' 
to  the  brain." 

Nay,  more.  If  the  "aspiration,"  the  "resolve," 
"the  fine  glow  of  feeling"  is  allowed  to  "evaporate," 
"it  is  worse  than  a  chance  lost;  it  zwyrks  so  as  posi- 
tively to  hinder  future  resolutions  and  emotions  from 
taking  the  normal  path  of  discharge." 

Let  Prof.  James  explain  himself  even  more  fully. 
The  quotation  is  from  the  chapter  on  Habit  in 
Volume  I  of  his  "Psychology."  "The  entire  ner- 
vous system  is  nothing  but  a  system  of  paths  be- 
tween a  sensory  terminus  a  quo  and  a  muscular, 
glandular  or  other  terminus  ad  quem.  A  path  once 
traversed  by  a  nerve  current  might  be  expected  to 
follow  the  law  of  most  of  the  paths  we  know,  and  to 
be  scooped  out  and  made  more  permeable  than  be- 
fore ;  and  this  ought  to  be  repeated  with  each  new 
passage  of  the  current.  Whatever  obstructions 
may  have  kept  it  at  first  from  being  a  path  should 
then,  little  by  little  and  more  and  more,  be  swept 
out  of  the  way,  until  at  last  it  might  become  a 
natural  drainage  channel.  This  is  what  happens 
where  either  solids  or  liquids  pass  over  a  path; 
there  seems  no  reason  why  it  should  not  happen 
where  the  thing  that  passes  is  a  mere  wave  of  re- 
arrangement in  matter  that  does  not  displace  itself, 
but  merely  changes  chemically,  or  turns  itself  round 
in  place,  or  vibrates  across  the  line.  The  most 
plausible  views  of  the  nerve  current  make  it  out  to 
be  the  passage  of  some  such  wave  of  rearrange- 
ment as  this." 

Observe  from  the  foregoing  that  the  mischief  of 
our  unilateral  system  of  ethical  education  is  more 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  109 

than  negative.  It  is  not  merely  that  g-ood  impres- 
sions created  by  preaching  and  teaching  in  the 
Church  and  out  of  it,  fail  to  work  themselves  out 
into  good  conduct — the  failure  to  give  them  a 
chance  results  in  a  positive  injury;  it  produces  a 
malformed  brain.  That  "natural  drainage  channel" 
is  the  Great  Leak  that  has  cost  humanity  so  dear, 
and  it  is  just  as  really  a  pathological  condition  as  is 
the  channel  which  makes  it  so  easy  to  get  drunk, 
and  therefore  so  hard  to  keep  sober;  so  easy  to 
gamble  and  therefore  so  hard  to  be  honest.  It  is 
a  case  of  wrong  channels  scooped  out — with  the 
help  of  society. 

Prof.  Thorndyke  is  of  the  same  opinion  as  Prof. 
James.  In  his  chapter  on  "Laws  of  Brain  Action" 
he  says:  "These  stimuli  cannot  come  to  nothing. 
Their  energy  must  either  be  transmitted  on  to  other 
cells  and  eventually  out  through  the  efferent  (ac- 
tion) cells  to  the  muscles  or  else  cause  modifica- 
tions— do  work — in  cells  of  the  central  system. 
Just  as  in  a  storage  battery  electric  charges  coming 
in  must  sooner  or  later  be  discharged  out  or  modify 
the  battery  itself,  so  the  stimuli  coming  into  the 
brain  must  transform  it  or  be  conducted  out  and 
cause  the  muscles  to  contract.  Every  stimulus 
has  its  result  somehow,  somewhere." 

So  also  Prof.  G.  E.  Muller,  as  construed  by  Prof. 
James.  In  speaking  of  the  miller's  awaking  when 
the  mill  stops,  and  of  the  phenomenon  presented 
by  a  rustic  coming  into  the  city  who  is  first  sleep- 
less because  of  the  roar  and  presently  finds  himself 
indifferent  to  it,  he  says :  "Impressions  which  come 
to  us  when  the  thought  centers  are  preoccupied 
with  other  matters  may  thereby  be  blocked  or  in- 
hibited from  invading  these  centers,  and  may  then 
overflow  into  lower  paths  of  discharge.  And  he 
further  suggests  that  if  this  process   recur  often 


110  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

enough,  the  side-track  thus  created  will  grow  so 
permeable  as  to  be  used  no  matter  what  may  be 
going  on  in  the  centers  above.  In  the  acquired 
inattention  mentioned,  the  constant  stimulus  always 
caused  disturbances  at  first,  and  consciousness  of  it 
was  extruded  successfully  only  when  the  brain  was 
strongly  excited  about  other  things.  Gradually  the 
extrusion  became  easier  and  at  last  automatic." 

Therefore  it  is  that  many  beside  Tennyson's 
northern  farmer  "hear  parson  abummin'  awa,"  and 
so  also  it  is  that  manv  a  man  becomes  "gospel  hard- 
ened" under  the  fervent  and  faithful  preaching  of  his 
minister.  Had  he  only  allowed  that  impulse  to 
arise  and  follow  Christ  its  natural  motor  response, 
and  kept  on  doing  so,  what  a  vastly  different  char- 
acter and  destiny  he  might  have  achieved !  He 
did  not  know  that  he  was  in  his  own  brain  locking 
himself  out  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  "How 
hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,"  said  Jesus.  Why?  Because 
their  motor  channels  are  well  developed  in  direc- 
tions very  remote  from  those  of  repentance,  need, 
lowliness  and  altruism. 

Prof.  Hugo  Mimsterberg,  of  Harvard,  who  has 
perhaps  done  more  than  any  other  man  in  America 
to  relate  psychology  as  a  science  to  the  practical 
affairs  of  life,  and  to  gear  it  to  our  every-day  needs, 
goes  even  further  for  he  finds  serious  consequences 
resulting  from  what  he  terms  a  "strangulated  emo- 
tion." The  instances  he  cites  are  pathological  and 
therefore  extreme ;  but  they  may  serve  neverthe- 
less to  illustrate  what  goes  on  when  nature  doesn't 
get  a  chance  to  find  any  motor  discharge  at  all  for 
some  overpowering  emotion. 

From  his  clinic  (for  both  himself  and  Prof.  James 
are  doctors  of  medicine  as  well  as  of  philosophy, 
laws  and  literature)   he  brings  forth   cases   which 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  111 

have  come  to  him  for  treatment.  Here  is  a  girl 
standing"  in  a  public  waiting-room  which  is  filled 
■with  tobacco  smoke.  She  is  very  fatigued  and  be- 
low par  nervously.  She  is  engaged  to  a  young  man. 
Presently  she  hears  a  girl  nearby  tell  her  friend 
that  this  young  man  is  in  love  with  another  young 
lady.  Instantly  there  is  a  powerful  emotional  dis- 
turbance within.  The  natural  impulse  is  to  cry  out, 
deny  it,  or  do  something  else  by  way  of  protest. 
That  is  the  normal  path  of  discharge.  But  she  is 
in  a  public  place  among  strangers  and  that  impulse 
is  strangled.  Ever  after  the  smell  of  tobacco  smoke, 
bringing  up  that  scene  by  association  of  ideas,  up- 
sets her  nervously  and  makes  her  ill.  Dr.  Miinster- 
berg  by  hypnotic  suggestion  opens  up  the  proper 
channel  of  discharge  and  she  is  freed  from  her 
disability. 

Here  is  another  case  from  the  same  author's 
"Psychotherapy."  The  case  is  that  of  a  young 
woman  of  twenty-five,  a  school  teacher  of  pure  char- 
acter and  hating  the  very  thought  of  immorality  of 
any  kind.  She  is  obsessed  by  the  idea  that  at  any 
time  she  may  become  a  mother.  Life  is  a  burden  on 
account  of  this  thought,  which  she  recognizes  as 
foolish  yet  cannot  shake  off.  She  shuns  society 
because  of  the  embarrassment  caused  by  this 
thought  when  in  company.  She  had  had  this 
thought  as  long  as  she  could  remember,  and  suffered 
from  it  even  when  among  her  girl  pupils  in  the 
private  institution  in  which  she  taught. 

Prof.  Miinsterberg,  shrewdly  inferring  that  there 
must  have  been  some  emotional  shock  in  her  past 
life,  obliges  her  to  burrow  into  the  years  gone  be- 
fore. Finally  she  tells  him  of  an  experience  she  had 
when  about  thirteen  years  of  age.  At  that  time  a 
beautiful  girl  whom  she  admired  very  much,  sud- 
denly got  a  baby  which  died  in  a  few  days.    At  that 


113  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

time  no  thought  of  wrong-doing  seems  to  have  en- 
tered into  the  news.  She  was  at  that  time  com- 
pletely naieve.  "She  received  an  intense  shock  at 
the  thought  that  an  unmarried  girl  might  suddenly 
get  a  child  which  might  then  as  suddenly  die." 

Prof.  Miinsterberg  reckoned  that  this  was  the 
cause  of  the  trouble — "a  deep,  physiological  brain  ex- 
citement which  had  irradiated  toward  the  ideas  of 
her  personality.  It  had  stirred  up  there  associations 
which  kept  their  psychological  character  while  the 
primary  disturbance  had  long  lost  its  psychical  ac- 
companiment." So  he  sets  to  work  to  side-track 
that  association  by  linking  it  with  appropriate  as- 
sociations, thus  setting  it  right  in  the  whole  system 
of  her  thoughts.  Inducing  a  hypnotic  state  he  asks 
her  to  think  backward  as  vividly  as  she  can  to  that 
experience  of  her  youth  and  to  fancy  meeting  that 
pretty  girl  once  more,  and  to  imagine  that 
she  speaks  with  her.  Then  he  makes  her  talk  with 
him.  She  assures  him  that  she  sees  the  scene  dis- 
tinctly. She  believes  she  sees  the  girl  on  the  street. 
He  suggests  that  she  tell  her  just  what  she  thinks 
of  her;  to  tell  her  that  she  understands  now  what 
she  did  not  understand  in  her  childhood  and  that 
she  knows  she  must  have  lived  an  immoral  life  and 
that  no  pure  girl  could  ever  find  herself  in  such  a 
case.  She  expresses  her  disapproval  in  the  strong- 
est possible  terms  (this  time  the  natural  comple- 
mentary motor  discharge)  and  likewise  expresses 
her  own  feeling  of  happiness  that  such  a  thing 
could  never  happen  to  her.  She  awakes  quite  ex- 
hausted from  her  nervous  excitement.  The  power 
of  the  obsessing  idea  is  weakened;  in  four  more 
treatments  it  is  entirely  gone  and  the  young  woman 
goes  on  her  way  rejoicing.  A  new  and  natural 
channel  of  motor  discharge  has  been  opened. 

Other    cases    Prof.    Miisterberg    cites,    cases    of 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  113 

capable  men  as  well  as  cases  from  the  ranks  of  "the 
weaker  sex,"  in  which  life  was  a  burden  and  a 
nightmare  simply  because  in  some  moment  of  physi- 
cal depletion  an  idea  had  become  "insistent"  be- 
cause of  "a.  strangulated  emotion."  He  adds: 
"Subtle  analysis  has  repeatedly  shown  that  many 
of  the  gravest  hysteric  symptoms  result  from  such 
a  suppression  of  the  emotions  at  the  beginning,  and 
disappear  as  soon  as  the  primary  experience  comes 
to  its  right  motor  discharge  and  gains  its  normal 
outlet  in  action.  The  whole  irritation  becomes 
eliminated,  the  emotion  is  relieved  from  suppression 
and  the  source  of  the  cortical  uproar  is  removed 
forever."  So  also  Freud,  of  Vienna,  Bleuler,  Jung, 
Stekel  and  others  of  the  Old  World.  All  of  these 
cases  were  cured  when  the  balance  was  restored  to 
the  brain  by  opening  up  the  proper  path  of  motor 
discharge. 

What  need  is  there  to  say  more?  Is  it  not  now, 
in  the  light  of  the  foregoing  pages,  backed  as  they 
might  be  by  others  from  the  greatest  scientists  of 
Europe,  clear  as  the  noonday  sun  just  why  we 
have  failed  to  turn  out  an  ethically  sufficient  char- 
acter, notwithstanding  all  our  tireless  effort  and 
costly  machinery?  Is  it  not  clear  that  it  is  utterly 
impossible  to  produce  anything  else  but  an  ethically 
insufficient  character  if  we  reject  the  voice  of  science, 
endorsed  as  it  is  by  the  dictates  of  common  sense, 
and  go  on  as  we  have  been  doing,  using  but  one 
principle  of  education  where  the  Almighty  has  or- 
dained two?  The  times  of  this  ignorance  God  may 
have  overlooked,  but  who  will  be  responsible  if  the 
Sunday-school  children  of  to-morrow  grow  up  full 
of  ideas  of  goodness  which  they  are  physically  un- 
able to  make  effective;  and  if  the  more  favored  of 
them  grow  up  only  to  find  themselves  with  a  brain 


114  WHY     THEY     F'AIL 

that  sheds  its  good  impressions  as  inevitably  as  a 
duck's  back  sheds  water?  Who  will  be  responsible 
for  the  abnormally  developed  "drainage  channels" 
which  should  never  have  been  so  deep,  and  for  the 
atrophied  ethical  action  cells,  the  beneficent  neu- 
rones, which  should  have  been  enlarged  to  effective 
capacity  by  a  long  and  carefully  supervised  training 
in  the  art  of  doing  the  good?  Who  but  we,  upon 
whom  the  end  of  the  ages  is  come  and  in  whose 
hands  are  the  flaming  torches  of  the  priests  of 
science? 

Knowledge  brings  with  it  both  opportunity  and 
responsibility.  Give  this  particular  spark  of  knowl- 
edge an  ethical  application  but  half  as  great  as  it 
receives  in  the  intellectual  and  practical  affairs  of 
life,  and  in  a  generation  you  will  have  a  race  of  men 
who  will  measure  up  to  Holland's  ideal  of  men: 

"Strong  minds,  great  hearts,  true  faith  and  ready 
hands. 

Men  whom  the  lust  of  office  does  not  kill; 

Men  whom  the  spoils  of  office  cannot  buy; 

Men  who  possess  opinions  and  a  will ; 

Men  who  have  honor ;  men  who  will  not  lie ; 

Men  who  can  stand  before  a  demagogue 

And  scorn  his  treacherous  flatteries  without  wink- 
ing; 

Tall  men,  sun-crowned,  who  live  above  the  fog 

In  public  duty  and  in  private  thinking." 


WHY.     THEY.     FAIL  115 


Foreword  to  Chapter  IV 

"What  care  I  for  caste  or  creed? 
It  is  the  deed,  it  is  the  deed. 
What  for  class  or  what  for  clan? 
It  is  the  man,  it  is  the  man. 
Heirs  of  love  and  joy  and  woe, 
Who  is  high  and  who  is  low? 
Mountain,  valley,  sky  and  sea, 
All  are  for  humanity." 

— N.  O.  Creed. 


CHAPTER  IV: 

THE  REMEDY 

The  rem'edy  for  what  ails  us  as  a  Church  and 
as  a  people  stands  out  very  distinctly  in  the  light 
of  Chapter  HI.  It  is  this — an  ethical  manual  train- 
ing department  in  home  and  Sunday-school — a  de- 
partment which  shall  have  as  its  special  function  the 
translating  of  the  good  impressions  now  being  re- 
ceived into  their  correlative  good  actions.  The  re- 
flexes will  do  the  rest.  Automatically,  silently,  ir- 
resistibly, inevitably  as  disease,  doctor's  bills  and 
gravitation,  there  will  be  built  up  in  the  boy's  brain 
a  group  of  neurones  or  cells  which  will  give  him 
power  to  respond  effectively  to  his  good  impres- 
sions, and  power  to  respond  not  only  effectively 
but  as  easily  and  as  naturally  and  as  pleasurably 
as  he  now  responds  to  a  call  to  go  in  swimming  in 
dog-days.  There  are  no  "ifs"  nor  "buts"  about  this. 
It  is  all  as  certain  as  the  rising  of  to-morrow's  sun, 
or  the  gathering  of  the  wheat  and  apple  crops  in  the 


116  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

Fall,  for  we  are  dealing  with  the  Law  of  God. 

The  truth  of  this  will  be  more  apparent  perhaps 
if  we  look  at  one  or  two  phases  of  life  in  which 
this  law  of  reflex  action  in  the  brain  get  a  chance 
to  show  what  it  can  do  there.  Theoretically  at  least 
the  law  of  the  land  obliges  every  man  to  send  his 
children  to  school  from  the  ages  of  say  six  to  fifteen. 
Why?  In  order  that  the  coming  man  may  know 
a  few  things  which  are  necessary  to  the  getting 
along  in  the  struggle  of  life.  Yes,  but  that  is 
the  shallow  conception  of  education.  The  deeper 
conception  of  our  educators  has  been  that  he  goes 
to  school,  not  so  much  to  absorb  a  few  facts,  how- 
ever important,  as  to  acquire  the  ability  to  think. 
The  ability  to  think  constitutes  the  chief  difference 
between  an  Edison  and  a  savage.  Now  our  educa- 
tionists know  there  is  only  one  way  by  which  a  man 
Of  a  boy  can  acquire  the  power  to  think,  and  that  is 
by  thinking;  thinking  long  and  hard.  When  the 
teacher,  therefore,  wishes  to  teach  your  boy  to  think 
she  does  not  regale  him  with  fairy  stories ;  she  asks 
him  how  much  nine  hogs  will  cost  at  five  dollars  a 
hog.  If  he  doesn't  know  she  shows  him  how  to  find 
out,  and  then  requires  him  to  find  out  how  much 
all  the  hogs  on  the  farm  are  worth,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  neighbors'  hogs  and  the  hens  and  ducks. 
As  fast  as  the  power  tu  do  these  problems  passes 
into  the  sphere  of  the  automatic  and  easy  she  gives 
him  new  and  larger  ones  and  he  has  to  keep  on 
thinking  hard  along  those  lines  every  day,  till  he 
longs  for  the  time  when  he  will  be  done  with  it 
all;  which  day  proves  always  a  to-morrow,  for, 
thirty  years  after,  if  you  run  across  him,  he  will 
confide  in  you  that  the  problems  he  is  working  on — 
state-craft,  corporation  law,  or  high  finance  it  may 
be,  are  the  longest  and  most  twisted  problems  he 
ever  laid  eyes  on;  but  he  loves  his  school  so  much 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  117 

now  he  wouldn't  run  away  from  it  for  all  the  fish 
in  the  sea,  to  say  nothing  of  the  added  artful  en- 
ticements of  certain  beautiful  girls  the  neigh- 
bors speak  of  as  his  wife  and  his  daughters. 

Meanwhile  his  old  playmate,  Billy  Bray,  who  had 
"jumped"  the  school  after  two  weeks  of  "durance 
vile"  and  never  built  up  a  proper  thought-machine, 
is  breaking  stones  on  the  road  which  runs  out  to 
his  old  comrade's  suburban  palace  and  ruminating 
on  the  wisdom  of  his  friend  Pat,  who  on  being 
asked  by  a  stranger  if  he  wasn't  afraid  his  brains 
would  melt  that  hot  day  if  he  didn't  keep  his  hat 
on,  replied,  "Bedad,  sor,  if  I  had  any  brains  to 
melt  do  yez  suppose  I'd  be  wurkin'  here?" 

When  the  public-school  teacher  wishes  to  develop 
a  memory  in  your  boy  she  leaves  the  hogs  alone  and 
begins  to  "soar  fancy's  flights  above  the  pole."  She 
gives  him  poetry  and  spelling  and  history  and  other 
things  to  memorize  and  then  sees  that  he  gives  it 
all  out  again  in  due  time.  And  as  he  memorizes 
and  then  tugs  and  tugs  to  get  it  all  fished  up  again 
for  exhibition  purposes,  somehow,  it  sticks  to  him, 
he  knows  not  how.  But  his  teacher  knows  that  the 
"effort,"  the  motor  discharge  does  it,  and  that  that 
is  simply  another  name  for  the  difficulty  of  plowing 
a  new  track  through  his  brain,  and  that  once  that 
track  is  well  made  it  will  surprise  him  how  easily 
those  things,  and  other  more  or  less  related  things, 
will  stick  and  come  forth  on  demand. 

Or  maybe  it  is  the  power  of  observation  the 
teacher  wishes  to  develop  in  your  boy.  She  knows 
she  might  as  well  "bay  the  moon,"  or  try  to  hold  a 
tidal  wave  as  to  try  to  give  him  that  power  by  any- 
thing she  can  say  or  do.  However,  what  she  knows 
she  can  do  is  to  stimulate  him  to  observe  for  him- 
self. That,  dear  reader,  constitutes  her  work  as  a 
teacher  just  there,  and  the  more  she  stimulates  him 


118  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

along  that  great  law  of  our  being  which  advises  us 
that  "all  consciousness  leads  to  action,"  the  better 
teacher  she  is.  So  she  asks  him  to  tell  her  how 
many  things  he  saw  along  the  road  as  he  came  to 
school  that  day,  or  how  many  objects  he  saw  in  the 
store-window  as  he  valked  by  it  at  noon  without 
stopping.  For  she  knows  that  the  boy's  brain  grows 
by  its  own  activity  and  in  the  precise  direction  in 
which  it  is  exercised,  and  if  ever  a  Buffalo  Bill  or  a 
Kit  Carson  is  to  be  made  out  of  this  lump  of  human- 
ity before  her,  it  will  be  only  because  he  has  been 
taught  that  seeing  he  shall  see  and  likewise  per- 
ceive. Most  of  us,  alas,  go  through  life  purblind 
because  the  teachers  of  our  day  did  not  know  how 
easy  and  how  profitable  it  is  to  build  up  observation 
neurones  in  a  boy's  head. 

Thus,  then, we  see  that  our  state  schools  recognize  as 
fundamental  and  absolutely  essential  in  education  this 
great  law  of  reflex  action  in  the  brain  of  the  pupil — 
that  "the  motor  limb  of  the  reflex  arc"  is  fully  as 
important  as  the  sensory  or  impression  limb.  So 
also  with  the  parents  in  the  practical  education 
which  they  all  insist  on  giving  their  children.  Not 
one  of  them  ignores  or  neglects  it.  Not  one  of 
them  can  be  found  in  America  to  maintain  that  a 
boy  can  be  taught  to  swim  without  swimming; 
skate  without  skating;  write  without  writing;  walk 
without  walking;  talk  without  talking,  or  fiddle 
without  fiddling,  much  less  to  learn  the  printing, 
weaving,  mining,  painting,  brakeing,  stenography, 
book-keeping  or  other  art,  trade  or  profession,  with- 
out actually  and  in  dead  earnest  doing  it  with  his 
own  brain  and  body.  The  only  things  that  don't  re- 
quire this  particular  kind  of  "eddication"  are  farm- 
ing, preaching  and  running  a  newspaper,  and  there 
seems  to  be  some  doubt  even  about  them. 

That  is,  the  motor  areas  of  the  brain  which  con* 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  11^ 

trol  hand  and  foot  and  eye;  reflection,  memory  and 
hearing,  etc.,  have  to  be  slowly  and  carefully,  and  if 
need  be,  painfully,  built  up  through  years  of  patient 
action,  which  is  just  as  patiently  supervised,  but 
when  it  comes  to  making  that  part  of  a  man  which 
is  the  highest  and  noblest  and  most  important  of 
all — yea,  the  man  himself,  why  then  we  can  do  that 
very  well  on  wind.  Just  blow  him  full  of  good 
sentiments;  tell  him  what  and  how  and  where  and 
when ;  inspire  him  with  the  vision  of  the  ideal, 
move  him  with  the  story  of  the  heroes  gone,  and  the 
future  will  take  care  of  itself. 

Not  so.  We  shall  not  travel  far  if  we  do  not 
distinguish  more  sharply  than  has  been  our  wont 
between  a  boy's  soul  and  his  intellect.  Metaphysi- 
cal and  psychological  hair-splitting  aside,  we  know 
that  a  boy's  soul  is  not  his  intellect.  We  build  his 
intellect  even  more  by  the  reflexes  of  impression 
than  we  do  by  impression  itself.  We  do  not  dream 
of,  we  do  not  dare  to,  neglect  the  development  of 
the  action  neurones  in  public  school  or  private  life. 
The  struggle  to  survive  would  soon  be  over  if  we 
did.  The  cry  is  rather  for  more  and  ever  more  em- 
phasis on  that  line.  W'hen  Prof.  James  was  asked 
by  certain  educational  authorities  of  international 
standing  w^hat  reforms  he  would  introduce  in 
courses  of  study,  or  in  educational  organization,  or 
otherwise,  if  he  had  a  free  hand,  in  order  to  increase 
the  ethical  efficiency  of  school  training,  he  replied : 

"I  should  increase  enormously  the  amount  of 
manual  or  motor  training  relatively  to  the  book- 
work,  and  not  let  the  latter  preponderate  until  the 
age  of  fifteen  or  sixteen." 

That  statement  squares  very  well  with  the  con- 
viction he  has  elsewhere  expressed  that,  "The  most 
colossal  improvement  which  recent  years  have  seen 
in  secondary  education  lies  in  the  introduction  of 


120  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

the  manual  training  schools ;  not  because  they  will 
give  us  a  people  more  handy  and  practical  for  do- 
mestic life  and  better  skilled  in  trades,  but  because 
they  will  give  us  citizens  with  an  entirely  different 
intellectual  fiber." 

If  there  is  need  of  a  new  type  of  "entirely  differ- 
ent intellectual  fiber"  what  shall  be  said  for  the 
need  of  a  new  and  "entirely  different"  type  of  moral 
fiber?  And  if  the  new  and  "entirely  different"  type 
of  intellectual  fiber  can  be  developed  only  by  a  large 
use  of  the  principle  of  reflex  action  already  in  evi- 
dence at  every  turn,  how  sore  is  the  need  that  we 
should  at  least  make  some  kind  of  start  ethically 
in  the  direction  of  an  initial  application  of  so  puissant 
a  principle? 

The  land  does  not  suffer  so  much  from  lack  of 
brains  as  from  lack  of  moral  character.  "A  man 
may  smile  and  smile  and  be  a  villain."  College 
degrees  are  no  guarantee  of  integrity  in  a  land  or 
stock  deal.  An  eminent  professor,  himself  a  gradu- 
ate of  Harvard,  stated  not  so  long  ago  in  lecturing 
before  the  students  of  Chicago  University,  that  in 
his  time  no  form  of  public  iniquity  had  been  found 
in  eastern  Massachusetts  but  had  a  Harvard  gradu- 
ate at  the  head  of  it,  and  an  eminent  barrister  of 
Ohio  in  his  plea  in  a  notorious  school  case,  tritely 
observes,  "Why  should  I  be  taxed  to  educate  my 
neighbor's  child  if  the  education  you  give  him  only 
makes  the  little  rascal  twice  as  sharp  without  any 
additional  protection  to  my  throat?"  What  we 
want  is  greater  protection  for  our  throats,  and  our 
notes,  and  our  grocer's  bills,  and  our  pastor's  sal- 
aries, and  the  internal  revenues  of  our  civic,  state 
and  federal  governments. 

But  how  to  get  it  is  the  question.  To  get  it  we 
must  do  at  least  four  things.    We  must 

(1)     Stop  the  Great  Leak.      This  we  may  do  nega- 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  121 

lively,  as  indeed  we  have  been  doing,  by  using" 
the  method  of  inhibition.  The  priests  of  science 
who  roam  at  will  through  the  sacred  temples  of  the 
skull,  tell  us  that  on  the  heels  of  every  outgoing 
or  motor  impulse  there  goes  an  impulse  to  arrest  it. 
This  is  very  strange  but  so  it  is  they  say.  The  order 
is  no  sooner  given  than  another  countermanding  it 
is  on  the  way.  It  attends  the  other  "like  a  shadow." 
By  training,  by  attention,  by  association,  that  in- 
hibitory officer  may  be  reinforced  and  speeded  up 
so  that  he  can  overhaul  the  first  official  and  deprive 
him  of  his  power  to  act,  as  when  for  example,  in 
response  to  a  blow  or  a  vile  epithet,  a  man  raises 
his  arm  to  strike  and  then  suddenly  remembers  and 
refrains. 

Or  again,  Johnny  has  unlawfully  annexed  the 
shilling  he  found  on  the  sideboard,  and  subsequently 
sought  refuge  in  the  devious  paths  of  high  finance. 
There  ensues  a  strict  maternal  investigation  in 
which  he  is  found  guilty  and  duly  punished  with 
that  ancient  and  handy,  if  humble,  instrument,  the 
maternal  slipper.  As  the  crime  of  theft  has  been 
aggravated  by  promiscuous  and  ingenious  lying  to 
his  best  friend,  the  punishment  is  so  proportionately 
severe  that  for  two  days  he  dispenses  with  a  chair  at 
meal  time,  eats  off  a  shelf  and  evinces  but  a  languid 
interest  in  anything  that  looks  like  manly  sport. 

A  week  later  another  golden,  no  silver,  oppor- 
tunity to  become  suddenly  rich  by  predatory  means 
presents  itself,  and  his  little  palm  is  about  to  reach 
out  once  more  to  gather  in  the  spoils,  when  by  the 
blessed  law  of  association  of  ideas,  memory  brings 
up  what  happened  after  his  last  offence.  Then  a 
battle  rages  within  his  breast.  A  vision  of  all  the 
gum  and  candy  and  marbles  and  tops  he  could  buy 
with  that  half  dollar  rises  before  him.  Were  that 
all,    he    would    have    it — but    it    isn't.      The    stern, 


123  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

grieved  look  of  his  immediate  maternal  ancestor 
comes  up  before  his  face.  In  her  hand  is  the  slab 
of  doom ;  in  the  cast  of  her  jaw  is  the  determination 
that  knows  no  parley  and  stands  no  monkeying; 
in  his  imagination  he  feels  a  tingling  gluteus  maxi- 
mus  and  sees  another  period  of  two  days  without 
any  special  interest  in  life,  and,  he  capitulates.  "The 
native  hue  of  resolution  is  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale 
cast  of  thought"  and  he  is  constrained  to  "let  I  dare 
not  wait  upon  I  would." 

His  mother's  training  has  saved  him.  The  wrong 
motor  impulse  has  been  inhibited  from  behind  and 
above.  A  new  "association  complex"  in  which  pain 
is  the  dominant  note  gathers  itself  about  the  thought 
of  taking  what  doesn't  belong  to  him  and  stops  his 
hand  just  in  time,  and  so  he  is  saved  more  than  a 
peck  of  trouble  in  later  life.  Not  all  in  one  treat- 
ment of  course.  A  Hartford  woman  may  have  mirac- 
ulously cured  her  young  hopeful  of  the  tobacco 
habit  by  the  laying  on  of  hands,  but  it  probably  re- 
quired more  than  one  application. 

Who,  but  the  recording  angel  can  tell  how  much 
of  human  honesty  is  of  just  that  kind — a  negative 
kind.  We  are  restrained  from  evil  not  by  love  of  the 
good  but  by  fear  of  the  consequences — what  the  law 
says,  the  neighbors  will  say,  or  wife  or  sweetheart 
will  think.  All  that  is  good  in  so  far  as  it  goes  and 
it  should  in  no  wise  be  neglected,  as  wise  old  Solo- 
mon advised  when  he  said  something  about  sparing 
the  child  and  spoiling  the  rod — or  was  it  the  other 
way  about?  Undoubtedly  the  maternal  slipper  is 
one  of  the  very  mightiest  institutions  in  the  land. 
If  it  were  not  for  it  Dr.  Wiley's  pure  food  law  would 
be  a  joke,  civilization  would  wane,  barbarism  recru- 
desce and  every  man  be  for  his  own  hand.  Our 
mother's  slipper !  All  honor  to  it !  No  small  part 
of  all  the  real  honor  we've  got  rests  ultimately  on  it. 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  123 

But  there  is  a  more  excellent  way,  the  positive. 
To  "be  not  overcome  of  evil"  is  well;  but  it  is  not 
half  so  well  as  to  be  able  "to  overcome  evil  with 
good."  To  have  the  power  of  inhibition  is  some- 
thing. Let  us  not  despise  or  think  of  abandoning 
it.  It  has  its  place.  Fear  is  useful  sometimes. 
It  is  better  to  be  saved  by  fear  that  chokes  a 
wrong  impulse  than  not  to  be  saved  at  all :  but  it 
is  better  far  to  have  opened  wide  the  channel  of 
right  action  so  that  friction  there  is  reduced  to  a 
minimum  and  nervous  impulses  just  take  naturally  to 
it  as  the  path  of  least  resistance. 

The  way  to  inhibit  a  movement  is  to  do  the  oppo- 
site. That  closes  the  door  quite  effectually.  You 
cannot  both  open  and  shut  so  much  as  your  eye  at 
the  same  time,  nor  your  hand,  nor  your  lips.  The 
true  education  will  seek  to  be  positive  rather  than 
negative ;  constructive  rather  than  destructive.  It 
will  seek  to  "increase  enormously  the  manual  or 
motor  training  relatively  to  the  book  work."  Apropos 
of  this,  hear  what  Professor  John  Dewey,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago,  has  to  say  in  his  "Ethical  Principles 
Underlying  Education." 

"We  cannot  secure  the  development  of  positive 
force  of  character  unless  we  are  willing  to  pay  the 
price  psychologically  required.  We  cannot  smother 
and  repress  the  child's  powers,  or  gradually  abort 
them  (from  failure  to  permit  sufficient  opportunity 
for  exercise)  and  then  expect  to  get  a  character  with 
initiative  and  constructive  industry.  I  am  aware 
of  the  importance  attaching  to  inhibition,  but  mere 
inhibition  is  valueless.  The  only  restraint,  the 
only  holding-in  that  is  of  any  worth  is  that  which 
comes  through  holding  all  the  powers  concentrated 
in  devotion  to  a  positive  end.  The  end  cannot  be 
attained  excepting  as  the  instinct  and  impulse  are 
kept  from  discharging  at  random  and  from  running 


124  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

off  on  side  tracks.  In  keeping  the  powers  at  work 
upon  their  relevant  ends  there  is  sufficient  oppor- 
tunity for  genuine  inhibition.  To  say  that  inhibi- 
tion is  higher  than  power  of  direction  morally,  is 
like  saying  that  death  is  worth  more  than  life,  nega- 
tion worth  more  than  affirmation,  sacrifice  worth  more 
than  service.  Morally  educative  inhibition  is  one  of 
the  factors  of  the  power  of  direction." 

So  then  the  mere  cry  of  "down !  down !"  to  our 
vicious  impulses  is  not  enough,  no  matter  how  stern 
and  inflexible  the  command.  We  must  do  some- 
thing more  if  we  are  to  stop  the  Great  Leak.  The 
water  that  is  dammed  up  at  the  crack  and  the  bung 
hole  will  overflow  at  the  sides  of  the  reservoir.  It  is 
our  business  both  to  seal  the  crack  and  to  find  a 
natural  outlet. 

(2)  We  must  open  tip  the  right  channels  of  dis- 
charge for  ethical  emotions  and  ideas.  This  is  the 
grand  imperative,  the  conditio  sine  qua  non  of  suc- 
cess in  ethical  education.  The  diffusive  emotional 
discharges  must  be  conserved  and  rightly  directed. 
There  is  enough  energy  going  to  waste  to  save  the 
man  so  far  as  his  human  relationships  are  con- 
cerned, if  we  can  but  make  proper  outlets  for  it. 
The  larger  part,  the  more  important  part  of  ethical 
education  consists  in  finding  and  making  the  right 
channels  of  discharge.  So  strongly  does  Professor 
James  feel  on  this  subject  that  he  delivers  himself 
as  follows.  The  further  quotation  may  be  pardoned 
in  view  of  the  importance  of  the  theme,  and  of  the 
fact  that  Professor  James  may  be  regarded  as  in  some 
sense  the  dean  of  American  psychologists  and  there- 
fore speaking  for  them  all. 

"The  habit  of  excessive  novel-reading  and  thea- 
tre-going will  produce  true  monsters  in  this  line. 
The  weeping  of  a  Russian  lady  over  the  fictitious 
personages  in  the  play  while  her  coachman  is  freez- 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  125 

ing  to  death  on  his  seat  outside,  is  the  sort  of  thing 
that  everywhere  happens  on  a  less  glaring  scale. 
Even  the  habit  of  excessive  indulgence  in  music, 
for  those  who  are  neither  performers  themselves 
nor  musically  gifted  enough  to  take  it  in  a  purely 
intellectual  way  has  probably  a  relaxing  effect  upon 
the  character.  One  becomes  filled  with  emotions 
which  habitually  pass  without  promptings  to  any 
deed,  and  so  the  inertly  sentimental  condition  is  set 
up.  The  remedy  would  be  never  to  have  an 
emotion  at  a  concert  without  expressing  it  after- 
wards in  soine  active  way.  Let  the  expression  be 
the  least  thing  in  the  world — speaking  genially  to 
one's  aunt,  or  giving  up  one's  seat  in  a  horse-car,  if 
nothing  more  heroic  offers —  but  let  it  not  fail  to 
take  place. 

"These  latter  cases  make  us  aware  that  it  is  not 
simply  particular  lines  of  discharge,  but  also  general 
forms  of  discharge,  that  seem  to  be  grooved  out  by 
habit  in  the  brain.  Just  as,  if  we  let  our  emotions 
evaporate,  they  get  into  a  way  of  evaporating;  so 
there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  if  we  often  flinch 
from  making  an  effort,  before  we  know  it  the  effort- 
making  capacity  will  be  gone,  and  that  if  we  suffer 
the  wandering  of  our  attention,  presently  it  will 
wander  all  the  time." 

If  we  turn  aside  to  see  how  Dame  Nature  teaches 
her  human  progeny  we  shall  see  that  this  great 
principle  of  reflex  action  is  the  right  arm  in  her 
progress.  Watch  the  children  at  play  and  ask  the 
biologist  why  they  play  and  he  will  tell  you  that 
their  play  is  their  great  school  of  education  wherein 
their  senses  and  other  powers  become  developed 
through  their  own  activities.  The  baby  is  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  a  lump  of  putty.  The  new- 
born babe  can  neither  see  nor  hear.  His  main  line 
of   communication   with   the   outside  world   is   the 


126  WHY.     THEY     FAIL 

sense  of  taste.  That  is  the  one  most  important  to 
him  at  that  time.  Gradually,  however,  as  his  body- 
grows  the  other  lines  of  communication  become 
established.  The  motor  neurones  in  his  brain 
begin  to  myelinate,  or  take  on  the  protecting 
sheath,  and  things  are  got  ready  for  ever  enlarging 
motor  responses  to  the  impressions  coming  to  his 
brain  through  his  sense  organs.  Says  Prof.  Carl  E. 
Seashore,  of  Iowa  University,  in  "The  Biblical  World" 
for  October,  1910 : 

"Play  is  self-expression  for  the  pleasure  of  ex- 
pression, .  .  .  The  senses  develop  largely  through 
play  with  them.  Watch  the  infant  discover  his 
ears,  investigate  his  nose,  pat-a-cake  with  his  hands, 
splash  in  the  water,  grope,  reach,  grasp  and  fumble 
in  all  sorts  of  ways  with  touch  and  muscle  sense. 
These  semi-random  touch  plays  refine  the  sense 
of  touch,  develop  the  ability  to  locate  touch, 
and  give  meaning  and  pleasure  to  these  experiences 
by  founding  and  enriching  association.  Basking 
in  the  sun  is  a  temperature  play.  .  .  .  Capacity 
for  using  tools  develops  through  a  hierarchy  of 
plays.  Handling  is  notorious  with  children.  Watch 
the  picking,  tearing,  lifting,  shaking  and  throwing 
movements  of  the  baby.  See  him  lead  the  dog, 
the  bird,  the  kite,  and  even  his  own  playmates, 
thereby  enjoying  the  pleasure  of  being  a  cause  and 
feeling  an  extension  of  personality." 

If  we  are  to  do  our  work  in  moral  education  we 
must  therefore  take  a  hint  from  Nature  as  she  seeks 
to  fit  your  boy  for  the  lower  struggle  to  survive. 
Let  us  find  some  definite  activity  which  will  be 
immediately  and  directly  related  to  the  good  im- 
pulses we  have  stirred  within  him  in  the  Sunday- 
school  and  in  the  quiet  hour  at  home.  If  we  do 
that  to  the  same  degree,  systematically,  intelli- 
gently and  persistently,  we  shall  find  as  much  moral 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  127 

readiness  and  moral  executive  capacity  as  we  find 
Nature  has  produced  of  power  and  skill  in  his 
games  and  meclianical  arts,  for  we  are  working  by 
the  same  law  and  dealing  with  exactly  the  same 
brain ;  and  law  is  no  respecter  of  persons  or  creeds, 
theological  or  psychological. 

So  profound  and  immeasurably  significant  is  this 
principle  of  motor  activity  in  its  relation  to  char- 
acter-building that  one  kindergarten  teacher,  whose 
school  existed  in  the  slum  district  of  San  Francisco 
as  a  kind  of  missionary  institution,  affirms  that 
only  an  inappreciably  small  number  of  her  boys 
became  subject  to  arrest  because  of  misdemeanors 
notwithstanding  the  highly  unfavorable  environ- 
ment in  which  their  lives  were  placed.  Evidently 
manual  training  does  help  to  produce  citizens  with 
an  entirely  different  moral  as  well  as  entirely  differ- 
ent intellectual  fiber. 

Higher  up  on  the  long  spiral  of  human  education 
we  find  the  same  idea  efiiorescing.  In  Harvard 
Law  School  they  teach  young  men  law  by  the 
actual  practice  of  law.  They  let  theory  wait  on 
practice.  As  the  young  man  "does"  the  law  so  to 
speak,  he  learns  it.  So  also  in  Plartford  School  of 
Religious  Pedagogy.  Dr.  George  A.  Dawson,  of 
that  institution,  in  speaking  of  this  principle  of  re- 
flex action  and  motor  expression  observes : 

"This  self-expression  is  the  vitalizing  principle 
of  life  and  mind.  According  to  neurology  the  brain 
has  been  developed  largely  through  the  motor  re- 
sponses to  sensation.  The  relatively  large  motor 
areas  of  the  latter  prove  how  great  has  been  the 
influence  of  expression  in  developing  the  organ  of 
the  mind,  and  how  important  must  be  this  expres- 
sion daily  and  hourly  determining  its  blood  supply 
and  the  resultant  nourishment  and  the  elimination 
of  waste.    The  conclusion  is  irresistible  that  the  ner- 


128  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

vous  system  is  fashioned  racially  and  individually 
according  to  the  types  and  degrees  of  self-expres- 
sion. .  .  .  The  individual  was  not  only  born  a 
man,  he  becomes  a  man  by  fashioning  for  himself 
a  brain  that  can  feel  the  feelings  and  think  the 
thoughts  that  are  human.  This  he  does,  in  a  large 
measure,  according  as  he  lives  or  is  allowed  to 
live,  on  the  level  of  most-complete-self-expression. 
.  .  .  Finally  greater  emphasis  will  be  laid  on 
motor  expression  in  religious  education.  That  is 
to  say,  attention  will  more  and  more  be  directed 
to  the  executive  function  of  righteousness.  It  is 
all  very  well  to  feel  righteously  and  to  think  right- 
eously but  the  final  test  of  both  is  the  deed.  Relig- 
ious educators  must,  and  will,  devise  some  means 
of  helping  boys  and  girls  to  work  out  their  religious 
feelings  and  ideas.  The  heterogeneous  manual  ex- 
ercises over  sand  maps,  the  singing  in  choirs,  the 
taking  part  in  prayer-meetings  will  not  suffice. 
These  activities  may  be  valuable  or  next  to  worth- 
less, according  to  the  spirit  and  conditions  under 
which  they  are  performed.  Motor  or  executive 
righteousness  must  come  nearer  to  life  than  these 
activities  can  possibly  come.  It  must  be  of  a  type 
that  affects  the  life  of  the  doer  and  that  of  his 
fellowman.  It  must  take  the  form  of  doing  deeds 
of  virtue,  honesty,  kindness,  patriotism  and  the  like. 
A  church  or  Sunday-school  that  can  make  their 
religious  instruction  efficient  through  an  organized 
body  of  righteous  workers,  in  the  home,  business, 
politics,  and  throughout  the  social  life  everywhere, 
will  have  realized  this  ideal." 

This  tendency  of  our  emotions  to  find  some  chan- 
nel of  discharge  is  so  marked  that  a  man  can't  enjoy 
a  chocolate  but  his  whole  being  is  affected ;  and  on 
the  other  hand,  the  colored  man,  overcome  by  sleep, 
into  whose  open  mouth  a  wag  dropped  two  grains 


WHY     THEY     F'AIL  129 

of  quinine,  had  some  physiological  basis  for  his 
hurried  and  terrified  inquiries  for  a  physician  on 
the  ground  that  he  had  "dun  busted  his  gall."  Prof. 
Lange,  the  Danish  physiologist,  tells  us  that  a  man's 
outward  arm  movements  are  longer  than  usual  in 
response  to  a  sweet  taste  in  the  mouth,  and  con- 
trariwise if  one  gives  the  subject  a  bitter  taste  or 
a  wretched  sensation  of  any  sort,  the  flexor  move- 
ments will  be  sensibly  increased  and  the  outward 
movements  correspondingly  short^ened. 

Prof.  Miinsterberg  illustrated  this  interesting 
fact  by  an  ingenious  device  which  he  attached  to 
the  lower  part  of  his  vest.  After  learning  to  adjust 
a  slide  to  a  nicety  automatically,  he  began  a  six- 
months'  series  of  experiments.  "My  diary,"  he  says, 
"indicated  essentially  three  fundamental  pairs  of 
feeling  in  the  course  of  time.  There  was  pleasure 
and  displeasure,  there  was  excitement  and  depres- 
sion, and  there  was  gravity  and  hilarity.  The  fig- 
ures showed  that  in  the  state  of  excitement  both  the 
outward  and  inward  movements  became  too  long, 
and  in  the  state  of  depression  both  became  too  short; 
in  the  state  of  pleasure  the  outward  movements  be- 
came too  long,  the  inward  movements  too  short;  in 
the  state  of  displeasure  the  opposite — the  outward 
movements  too  short  and  the  inward  movements  too 
long.  In  the  case  of  gravity  or  hilarity  no  constant 
change  in  the  lengths  of  the  movements  resulted; 
but  the  rhythm  and  rapidity  of  the  movements  was 
influenced  by  them." 

One  naturally  clenches  the  hands  in  anger  or 
shouts  and  throws  up  his  cap  in  extremes  of  joy. 
Whatever  strongly  awakens  a  feeling  starts  mus- 
cular action  toward  that  particular  end.  These  ac- 
tions are  generally  sub-conscious  but  none  the  less 
real  for  that.  Prof.  Miinsterberg  did  not  know  he 
was  sliding  his  slide  too  far  in  his  pleasant  moments 


130  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

or  coming  short  of  the  mark  when  he  was  depressed, 
till  he  examined  his  little  instrument.  So  it  is  that 
one  may  have  converse  with  his  subconscious  self 
by  means  of  the  ouija  board  of  the  spiritualists  and 
be  "dead  certain"  he  is  not  talking  to  himself.  Think 
of  a  letter  of  the  alphabet  and  the  registering  at- 
tachment of  the  plate  on  which  the  hand  rests,  im- 
mediately flies  toward  it  as  by  an  uncanny  agency. 
The  operator  is  prepared  to  swear  that  he  did  not  do 
it,  and  so  a  mes-iage  will  be  spelled  out  that  ap- 
parently must  have  come  from  another  world.  When 
scientists  make  an  instrument  of  that  kind,  they  call 
it  an  automatograph,  and  tell  us  that  if  the  arm  be 
suspended  through  a  loop  it  will  move  with  much 
greater  freedom.  "And  if  a  witness  or  a  criminal, 
in  front  of  a  row  of  a  dozen  men,  claims  that  he 
does  not  know  any  one  of  them,  he  will  point  on 
the  automatograph,  nevertheless,  toward  the  man 
whom  he  really  knows  and  whose  face  brings  him 
thus  into  emotional  excitement." 

Similarly  the  eyes  may  be  made  to  betray  us  by 
turning  while  we  know  nothing  about  it,  or  if  one 
will  attach  a  ring  or  a  coin  to  a  string  a  foot  long, 
and  hold  it  out  and  then  "will"  it  to  move  backward 
and  forward  or  round  and  round,  it  will  presently 
begin  to  obey  although  there  may  be  absolutely  no 
conscious  efifort,  nor  any  visible  effort  to  move  it. 
That  is  caused  by  what  the  physiologists  call  uncon- 
scious cerebration. 

Opening  up  the  right  motor  channels  for  our 
ethical  emotions  and  ideas  is  desirable  still  further 
because,  as  Prof.  Miinsterberg  and  others  tell  us, 
in  order  that  an  idea  may  attain  to  full  "vividness" 
it  is  necessary  to  have  a  motor  discharge,  i.  e.,  an 
action  of  some  sort  connected  with  it.  To  use 
Prof.  Miinsterberg's  own  expression — "Full  vivid- 
ness belongs  only  to  those  sensations  for  which  the 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  131 

channels  of  motor  discharge  are  open."  We  want 
our  boys  to  have  vivid  ideas  about  the  essentials  of 
character;  we  must  therefore  see  that  the  higher 
aspirations  find  an  outlet  in  such  activities  as  they 
will  feel  are  not  "empty  gesture-making,"  but  of 
that  hard  quality  which  their  hard-headed  fathers 
and  other  grown-ups  cannot  despise. 

We  need  some  kind  of  ethical  manual  training 
department  for  the  boy  because  it  is  only  in  such  a 
world  he  can  make  his  ethical  ideas  have  reality  to 
himself.  When  he  finds  that  ethical  ideas  may  have 
a  vital  connection  with  things  in  the  world  of  things 
in  which  he  finds  himself,  he  gets  a  new  respect  for 
them  and  a  new  interest  in  them.  What  we  write, 
or  make,  or  own,  is  of  much  greater  interest  to  us 
than  what  other  people  make  or  write  or  own  for  us. 
The  reflex  of  an  act  tends  to  deepen  the  interest  in 
that  act.  If  you  nurse  a  sick  child  or  bind  up  the 
broken  leg  of  a  dog  they  will  never  again  be  to 
you  the  objects  of  indifference  they  were  before  you 
did  the  kindly  deed.  It  was  for  this  reason  that 
shrewd  old  Benjamin  Franklin  used  to  borrow  books 
of  his  enemies.  He  knew  that  when  they  had  done 
him  a  kindness  they  had  largely  disarmed  them- 
selves, and  could  not  have  the  same  heart  to  attack 
him  again. 

Apropos  of  this  deepening  of  interest  by  the  re- 
flex of  one's  own  activities  a  further  paragraph  from 
'Prof.  Baldwin  may  be  of  interest. 

"Purely  intellectual  interest  is  therefore  tem- 
porary. It  does  not  attach  itself  firmly  enough  to 
its  object  to  cause  the  latter  to  become  one  of  our 
interests  or  goods.  I  am  interested  in  the  morning 
paper,  the  street  sights,  my  afternoon  drive  and  the 
debating  society;  but  to-morrow  a  set  of  new  en- 
gagements carries  my  interest,  and  the  engagements 
of  yesterday  now  past,   only  furnish  one  or   two 


132  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

points  at  which  my  permanent  hfe-interests  have 
been  touched.  What  then  constitutes  more  per- 
manent interest,  over  and  above  the  simple  interest 
of  the  intellectual  art  of  discrimination?  Emotional 
and  active  interest.  So  far  interest  simply  repre- 
sents a  tendency  to  know.  Its  objects  are  mere  ob- 
jects that  come  and  go  indifferently  to  us;  when  we 
have  learned  what  they  are  and  how  they  act  our 
curiosity  is  satisfied.  But  bring  them  within  the 
line  of  our  emotional  or  volitional  reactions  and 
everything  is  changed.  Does  their  being  what  they 
are  or  doing  what  they  do  have  an  effect  on  me? 
That  is  the  vital  question.  The  errand  boy  in  an 
office  carries  fifty  letters  a  day  to  his  employer,  and 
they  have  no  interest  for  him ;  he  knows  them  to 
be  letters  for  X,  Y  and  Z,  and  his  curiosity  is  satis- 
fied. But  let  one  letter  come  to  himself  and  then 
not  the  words  it  contains  or  the  love  it  brings  inter- 
ests him  alone ;  but  the  envelope,  its  sides  and  cor- 
ners, the  stamp,  the  address,  the  very  odor  of  it  fairly 
burn  him  with  their  interesting  aspects.  Anything 
in  short  gets  interesting  which  has  besides  its  re- 
lation to  other  things  and  people,  a  power  to  make 
me  feel  and  act.  I  may  know  the  presence  of  a  thing 
and  not  be  interested  but  I  cannot  feel  its  presence, 
and  much  less  can  I  act  upon  its  presence  without 
coming  to  think  it  worth  my  close  attention.  .  .  . 
Ordinarily  we  act  in  reference  to  a  thing  because  we 
are  interested  in  it,  which  means  because  we  are 
impelled  by  intellectual  or  emotional  interest.  But 
it  is  still  true  that,  after  acting  our  interest  is  greater 
than  before.  Any  effort  expended  on  a  thing  makes 
it  more  worthful  to  us." 

The  reflex  of  an  ethical  action  not  only  deepens 
the  interest  in  that  act,  creates  a  tendency  to  do  it 
again,  gives  vividness  to  the  idea  of  it,  and  affords 
pleasure  in  the  doing  of  it,  but  it  also  builds  up  by 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  133 

so  much  the  power  of  moral  discrimination  as  noth- 
ing else  can. 

It  is  painfully  illuminating  to  talk  with  retail  mer- 
chants and  other  business  men  on  the  conscience  of 
the  other  fellow.  When  it  comes  to  business  deal- 
ings the  characters  of  men  of  the  greatest  piety 
seem  to  be  sadly  vulnerable.  No  one  can  well 
doubt  that  they  are  Christian  men,  and  yet  there 
is  the  exasperating  hiatus  between  what  they  are 
in  action  and  what  they  ought  by  their  profession  to 
be.  Their  consciences  seem  to  be  blunted  and  ut- 
terly oblivious  of  the  fine  points  of  honor  in  business 
on  which  the  children  of  this  world,  who  make  honor 
a  religion,  pride  themselves  so  highly. 

This  undoubtedly  is  because  they  have  never  had 
a  proper  ethical-action  training.  It  is  not  merely 
that  the  ethical  action  neurones  are  undeveloped, 
but  that  other  neurones  which  have  to  do  with  dis- 
crimination are  not  developed.  And  the  only  way 
they  can  be  developed  is  by  actually  discriminating. 
As  we  discriminate  in  any  field  of  thought  a  new 
group  of  judgment  neurones  is  built  up  there  which 
enables  one  to  judge  ever  more  accurately.  The 
reflexes  do  it  automatically.  But  they  are  the  re- 
sults of  so  many  separate  acts  of  judging. 

We  talk  of  educating  our  senses  and  our  fingers, 
etc.,  but  that  is,  strictly  speaking,  wide  of  the  truth. 
The  fact  is  that  no  sense  can  be  developed;  what 
is  developed  is  the  power  of  discriminating  between 
the  sensations  of  sound  in  case  of  the  musician,  of 
taste  with  the  tea  sampler,  of  color  with  the  sales- 
man. Where  there  is  anything  wrong  with  the 
nerve  of  transmission  going  to  the  brain  there  is  no 
cure  for  the  ill  by  any  amount  of  training.  One 
who  has  a  false  ear  for  musical  tones  and  cannot 
distinguish  "Home,  Sweet  Home"  from  the  national 
anthem  will  never  make  a  Mozart,   while,  as  for 


134  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

color-blindness,  the  only  way  to  cure  that  is  by  three 
generations  of  intermarriage  with  hawk-eyes. 

Why  do  we  go  to  the  financier  for  advice  in  a 
business  tangle?  Because  the  reflexes  of  forty  years 
of  judging  in  the  counting-room  have  built  a  power- 
ful group  of  financial  judgment  neurones,  which  it  is 
needless  to  say,  were  not  and  could  not  be  produced 
in  any  other  workshop  than  that  of  the  counting- 
house.  When  we  want  a  judgment  on  a  master- 
piece of  art,  we  go  to  another  man  who  has  had  forty 
years  of  judging  colors  and  canvasses.  As  he  mixed 
his  paints  and  wielded  his  brush  he  built  the  brain 
that  could  be  judge  par  excellence  of  lights  and 
shades  and  hues  of  beauty.  But  when  we  get  ap- 
pendicitis we  don't  want  either  of  them.  The  man 
who  for  forty  years  has  been  judging  symptoms  of 
disease  is  the  man  we  want,  and  maybe  after  him 
the  preacher,  the  lawyer  and  the  undertaker. 

Why  do  we  do  so  many  fool  things  in  our  "tender 
teens"  and  "teachable  twenties?"  Because  we  do 
not  know  that  they  are  fool  things.  And  why  do 
we  not  know?  Because  we  have  never  been  over  the 
trail  before  and  have  therefore  built  up  no  adequate 
judgment  neurones  and  no  power  of  judging  as  to 
what  is  correct  or  otherwise  in  the  premises. 

Moral  judgment,  or  the  power  of  accurate  dis- 
crimination between  right  and  wrong  in  conduct, 
like  any  other  judgment,  physical,  intellectual,  aes- 
thetic or  spiritual,  can  be  acquired  only  by  inducing 
a  long  series  of  judgments  on  the  part  of  the  boy. 
He  must  be  led  into  situations  where  he  is  "hard  up 
against  it"  and  must  make  choice  for  himself.  In- 
formation without  judgment  is  useless.  Judgment 
is  the  art  of  applying  information  to  life's  problems. 
As  his  choices  make  him  there  must  be  oversight 
that  he  may  be  encouraged  to  make  the  right  ones, 
and  whenever  he  has  done  otherwise  that  he  may  be 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  135 

encouraged  to  undo  the  wrong  by  making  it  right 
in  so  far  as  he  can,  by  other  right  choices.  To 
make  the  new,  right  choices  is  the  only  possible 
way  of  neutralizing  the  evil  effects  of  the  old  wrong 
ones  in  his  soul  and  in  his  brain. 

It  will  not  do  to  reply  just  here  that  conscience 
which  "doth  make  cowards  of  us  all"  is  enough  if 
we  will  but  heed  it.  Conscience,  in  so  far  as  it  de- 
pends on  brain  action  for  effective  operation,  is  sub- 
ject to  the  general  laws  of  brain  action,  and  can 
therefore,  like  any  other  faculty,  be  educated.  If 
there  is  a  sense  in  which  it  cannot  be  educated  there 
is  another  equally  important  sense  in  which  it  can. 
The  thugs  of  India  who  murdered  travelers  as  a 
pious  act;  Sicilian  bandits  who  invoke  the  Virgin's 
blessing  before  embarking  on  a  predatory  expedi- 
tion ;  Paul,  hounding  innocent  people  to  dungeons 
and  death,  and  church  members  who  grind  the  faces 
of  the  poor  that  they  may  endow  charities  and  build 
churches  for  the  worship  of  a  God  who  hates  in- 
iquity, are  cases  in  point. 

Heeding  our  consciences  is  beyond  question  ex- 
ceedingly important;  but  the  conscience  must  be 
enlightened  by  the  word  of  God.  This  work  our 
Sunday-schools  aud  churches  are  doing  very  well ; 
but  it  is  advisable  also  now  to  find  for  our  boys  and 
girls  an  arena  into  which  they  may  be  prematurely 
and  deliberately  thrown,  somewhat  as  Emerson 
intended  in  another  sphere  when  he  counselled  us 
to  "cast  the  bantling  on  the  rocks."  In  that  arena, 
in  that  stern  world  of  hard,  cold  business,  facts  and 
things,  conscience  will  find  some  strenuous  exercise 
when  it  gets  mixed  up  in  the  tussle  with  a  brood  of 
lusty,  red-blooded  and  rampageous  feelings  such  as 
My  Lord  Pride ;  My  Lord  Pleasure ;  My  Lord 
Avarice,  and  others  which  need  not  be  named.  Con- 
science as  we  have  it,  dilettanti,  supine,  lily-fingered, 


136  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

delicate,  will  wake  up  to  consciousness  of  its  own 
royal  state  and  dignity  when  it  suddenly  finds  it- 
self struggling  for  supremacy  in  that  den  of  wild- 
cats. Give  us  neurones  of  moral  discrimination,  and 
neurones  of  moral  action,  and  we  shall  have  men  of 
moral  power  fitted  to  respond  valiantly  to  any  new 
moral  impression  which  comes  to  them  from  with- 
out. And  the  way  to  get  those  neurones  in  the 
amoeba  or  the  man,  as  that  ingenious  investigator, 
Prof.  Elmer  Gates,  has  shown,  is  by  reflex  action. 
Immeasurably  significant  is  his  experiment  with  the 
seven  pups.  Two  were  brought  up  in  utter  dark- 
ness ;  two  were  given  the  ordinary  dog-life  on  the 
farm,  and  three  were  given  two  hours'  training  daily 
in  distinguishing  colors,  by  walking  over  colored 
copper  plates,  some  of  which  were  electrified  and 
others  not.  The  shock  became  a  stimulus,  the  color 
a  guide.  In  a  year  they  could  distinguish  hundreds 
of  colors  and  their  mind  activity  was  greatly  in- 
creased. Then  all  were  chloroformed  for  examina- 
tion of  their  visual  centers.  The  first  two  had  no 
more  well-developed  cells  than  a  pup  a  day  old;  the 
second  two  averaged  eighty-nine  well-developed  cells 
per  square  millimeter,  while  the  third  group  approxi- 
mated the  human  brain  with  twelve  hundred  to  four- 
teen hundred  per  square  millimeter  of  surface.  That 
is,  a  year  of  intelligent  and  systematic  training  by 
reflex  action  did  more  for  the  dog  than  six  hundred 
generations  of  training  without  it.  How  much  bet- 
ter is  a  boy  than  a  dog! 

(3)  WE  MUST  DEVELOP  MORAL  ASSO- 
CIATION NEURONES  connecting  the  good  im- 
pression and  impulse  neurones  zvith  the  correlative 
good  action  neurones..  In  the  craniums  of  the  present 
generation  these  links  seem  sadly  broken.  The  great 
problem  of  church  life  which  has  never  yet  been 
solved  is  how  to  get  the  preaching  and  teaching  of 


WHY     TH.EY     FAIL  137 

the  Church  on  Sunday  translated  into  the  life  of 
Monday ;  how  to  get  religion  out  of  the  cloister  and 
into  the  market-place.  In  spite  of  all  that  has  been 
said  about  it,  we  seem  to  persist  in  living  in  a  dual 
world.  We  do  our  religion,  and  that  seems  right 
enough.  Then  we  do  our  business,  and  that  also  is 
beyond  question  necessary,  but  when  it  comes  to  doing 
both  together,  the  thing  seems  quixotic  and  even  im- 
possible. 

The  reason  for  that  is  that  we  have  never  done  the 
two  together.  If  we  had  often  mixed  religious  ideas 
and  impulses  with  business,  especially  in  our  early 
years,  there  would  be  nothing  grotesque  or  impos- 
sible, or  even  unpleasant,  about  doing  so  now.  If 
a  long  series  of  religious  impulses  had  found  motor 
channels  of  discharge  into  those  areas  of  the  brain 
given  over  to  business  considerations  and  actions, 
they  would  find  them  to-day,  not  only  easily  but 
pleasurably,  since  whatever  promotes  the  progress 
of  an  idea  into  consciousness  is  pleasurable,  and 
whatever  impedes  its  progress  is  unpleasant  and 
sometimes  painful. 

Now  it  is  a  law  of  brain  action  that  "when  two 
elementary  brain  processes  have  been  active  to- 
gether or  in  immediate  succession,  one  of  them  on 
recurring,  tends  to  propagate  its  excitement  into 
the  other."  That  constitutes  what  is  known  as  the 
law  of  association  of  ideas  ;  and  habit,  recency,  vivid- 
ness and  emotional  congruity  determine  what  comes 
next  in  the  ordinary  weaving  of  the  mind.  Ideas 
which  have  entered  the  mind  at  the  same  time,  or 
nearly  so,  are  so  linked  that  they  tend  to  bring 
one  another  "into  mind"  whenever  the  one  or  the 
other  is  mentioned.  If,  on  going  down  the  street 
of  a  strange  city  you  see  on  the  one  hand  a  striking 
statue  and  on  the  other  a  royal  palace,  and  twenty 
years  later  you  return,  the  sight  of  the  statue  will 


138  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

bring  before  your  mind's  eye  the  royal  palace.  Eb- 
binghaus  has  shown  by  experiments  that  an  idea 
is  associated  not  merely  with  the  one  that  follows  it, 
and  with  the  rest  through  that,  but  that  it  is  asso- 
ciated in  varying  degrees  with  all  the  others  near 
it.  In  nonsense  rhymes  he  found  that  syllables  as 
far  away  as  the  seventh  were  influenced  and  there- 
fore learned  more  rapidly  again  than  others  which 
had  no  such  associations. 

Someone  hands  you  a  fragrant  flower  and  at  the 
same  time  tells  you  that  it  is  called  a  rose.  After- 
ward when  you  think  of  that  odor  the  name  comes 
up  of  itself,  or  when  you  think  of  the  name  you  can 
recall  the  odor.  Prof.  Miinsterberg  very  nicely  tells 
us  about  the  "why"  of  it  in  his  "Psychotherapy," 
p.  42f. 

"The  excitement  of  each  of  these  two  brain  cells, 
the  one  in  the  olfactory  center,  the  other  in  the  audi- 
tory center,  irradiates  in  all  directions  through  the 
fine  branches  of  the  nerve  fibres.  Each  cell  has  re- 
lations to  every  other  cell  in  the  brain,  thus  there  is 
also  one  connecting  path  between  those  cells  which 
were  stimulated  at  once.  Now  if  the  two  ends  of 
an  anatomical  path  are  excited  at  the  same  time,  the 
path  itself  becomes  changed.  The  connecting  way 
becomes  a  path  of  least  resistance,  and  that  means 
that  if,  in  future,  one  of  the  two  brain  cells  becomes 
excited  again,  the  overflow  of  the  nervous  excite- 
ment will  not  now  go  on  easily  in  all  directions,  but 
only  just  along  that  one  channel  which  leads  to 
that  other  brain  cell.  A  theory  like  this  explains  in 
real  explanatory  terms,  in  ways  which  physics  and 
chemistry  can  demonstrate  as  necessary,  that  any 
excitement  of  the  odor  cell  runs  into  the  sound  cell 
and  vice  versa.    ... 

"The  whole  theory  of  physiological  associationism 
works  evidently  with  two  factors.     First  there  are 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  139 

millions  of  brain  cells  of  which  each  one  may  have 
its  particular  quality  of  sensation,  and  second,   each 
brain  cell  may  work  with  any  degree  of  energy  to 
which  the  intensity  of  the  sensation  would   corre- 
spond.   If  I  distinguish  ten  thousand  pitches  of  tone, 
they  would  be  located  in  ten  thousand  different  cell 
groups,    each   one   connected   through    a  special  fiber 
with  a  special  string  in  the  ear.    And  each  of  these 
tones  may  be  loud  or  faint,  corresponding  to  the 
amount  of  excitement  in  the  particular  cell  group. 
Every  other  variation  must  result  from  the  million- 
fold  connections  between  the  brain  cells.     Indeed, 
the  brain  furnishes  all  possibilities  for  such  a  theory. 
We  know  how  every  cell  resolves  itself  into  tree-like 
branch  systems  which  can  take  up  excitements  from 
all  sides,  and  how  it  can  carry  its  own  excitement 
through  long  connecting  fibres  to  distant  places,  and 
how    the    endings   of   these    fibres    clasp    into    the 
branches  of  the  next  cell,  allowing  the  propagation 
of  excitement  from  cell  to  cell.     We  know  further 
how  large  spheres  of  the  brain  are  confined  to  cells 
of  particular  function;  that  for  instance  cells  which 
serve  visual  sensations  are  in  the  rear  part  of  the 
brain  hemispheres,   and   so  on.     Finally  we   know 
how  millions  of  connecting  fibres  represent  paths  in 
all  directions,  allowing  very  well  a  co-operation  by 
association  between  the  most  distant  parts  of  the 
brain.     The   theories  found  their  richest   develop- 
ment when  it  was  recognized  that  large  spheres  of 
our  brain  centers  evidently  do  not  serve  at  all  merely 
sensory  states,  but  that  their  cells  have  as  their  func- 
tion only  the  intermediating  between  different  sens- 
ory centers.     Such  so-called  association  centers  are 
like  switchboards  between  the  various  mental  cen- 
ters.   Their  own  activity  is  not  accompanied  by  any 
mental  content,  but  has  only  the  function  of  regu- 
lating transmission  of  the  excitement  from  the  one 


140  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

to  the  other.  Above  all  their  operation  would  make 
it  possible  that  through  associative  processes  the 
wonderful  complexity  of  our  trains  of  thought  may 
be  reached." 

These  association  tracts  are  almost  entirely  absent 
at  birth,  but  they  develop  in  the  "handling"  of  the 
streams  of  sensation  pouring  in  through  the  vari- 
ous senses  of  the  body.  As  Edinger  observes: 
"They  extend  everywhere  from  convolution  to  con- 
volution, connecting  parts  which  lie  near  each  other 
as  well  as  those  which  are  widely  separated.  They 
are  developed  when  two  different  regions  of  the  cor- 
tex are  associated  in  a  common  action." 

The  italics  are  mine  for  the  point  is  of  vital  import- 
ance to  us  as  character  builders.  In  order  to  de- 
velop ethical  association  neurones  we  simply  must, 
therefore,  have  action  outlets  for  the  myriads  of 
good  impressions  we  are  daily  creating  in  youthful 
minds.  We  have  had  the  "impressions"  in  profusion 
all  along;  if  we  can  only  now  get  the  boy  engaged 
in  the  correlative  action,  the  association  neurones 
will  grow  like  mushrooms  without  our  bidding.  Na- 
ture takes  care  of  that  without  our  further  aid. 

It  is  not  because  our  people  are  misers  that  the 
great  cause  of  missions  for  which  the  Church  ex- 
ists, has  to  go  halting  and  begging;  it  is  because 
our  system  of  education  has  failed  to  provide  them 
with  the  necessary  beneficent  action  association 
neurones.  The  very  same  people  have  an  abund- 
ance of  money  for  everything  else  under  heaven 
that  comes  along,  and  they  have  it  for  the  reason 
that  years  of  opened  channels  in  those  other  di- 
rections make  it  easy  to  part  with  their  ducats  in 
those  ways  when  called  on  to  do  so. 

We  want  this  man  to  go  down  into  his  jeans  to 
help  us  out  religiously;  but  how  can  he  when  he  has 
never  done  it  before?    Take  an  illustration.    There 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  141 

on  a  rickety,  rural  wharf  stand  two  men  in  ex- 
cellent health.  Presently  a  tramp  steamer  crashes 
into  it  violently  on  the  crest  of  an  unlooked-for 
wave.  It  goes  down  and  both  men  are  precipitated 
into  deep  water.  The  one  gurgles  and  gasps  and 
goes  down  throwing  his  arms  out  wildly;  the  other 
shuts  ofif  his  wind  automatically,  makes  a  few  or- 
derly strokes  and  is  presently  shaking  himself  like 
a  spaniel  on  the  bank.  To  explain  their  differing 
fates  one  has  to  go  back  into  their  lives  fifteen  years. 
Doing  so  we  find  that  the  first  man,  as  a  boy,  never 
went  near  the  water;  the  second  man  did,  and  he 
did  then  the  "spittin'  an'  gaggin'  "  act  in  the  very 
same  way  the  other  man  so  fatally  exemplified  it 
later ;  but  as  he  was  where  he  could  get  his  toes 
on  the  bottom  before  his  wind  was  clean  cut  off, 
there  was  no  funeral  at  his  father's  house  next 
day.  Many  times  this  occurred  until  there  was  final- 
ly an  association  path  opened  up  between  the 
sensory  impression  of  cold-fluid-medium-coming-up- 
about-the-neck-mouth-and-nose,  and,  shut-off-wind, 
and  throw-out-legs-and-arms-so.  This  association  after 
a  time  became  so  well  established  as  a  reflex, 
automatic  circuit  that  it  was  physically  impossible 
to  take  him  off  his  guard.  The  cold-medium-sensa- 
tions coming  to  the  brain  from  the  danger  zone, 
found  the  motor  channel  to  the  superior  laryngeal 
nerve  which  controls  the  breathing,  and  the  other 
motor  nerves  controlling  arms  and  legs,  wide  open, 
and  the  muscles  were  savingly  commandeered  to 
action  in  an  instant.  The  other  man  had  all  the 
required  nerves  and  muscles  and  they  were  in  good 
working  order  too,  but  not  having  any  neurones  of 
connection,  the  brain  could  not  get  its  violent  dan- 
ger signals  translated  into  the  proper  action,  and  the 
lack  cost  him  his  life.  The  man  who  died  had  every 
idea  the  other  man  had  and  a  lot  more.     He  knew 


142  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

he  was  in  imminent  dang'er  just  as  well  as  the  other, 
and  that  he  ought  to  make  an  effort  to  save  himself, 
but  when  it  came  to  action  he  went  down.  His 
brain  under  impulse  of  i.  greater  fear  suddenly  gen- 
erated even  more  energy  than  the  other  man's,  but 
unfortunately  it  "irradiated"  into  the  wrong  chan- 
nels opened  by  previous  movements,  which,  how- 
ever desirable  they  might  have  been  under  other 
circumstances,  were  not  adapted  to  this  particular 
situation.  Failure  to  co-ordinate  his  knowledge  to 
action  cost  him  his  life. 

Even  so  neurones  of  business,  politics,  art,  letters, 
and  craftsmanship,  with  their  varied  connecting  neu- 
rones, are  valuable  enough,  and  all  but  indispensable 
to  the  world,  but  severally  or  collectively  they  avail 
little  or  nothing  when  the  superintendent  of  mis- 
sions faces  their  owners  with  his  plea  for  China  or 
the  slums  of  the  home  city.  Another  distinct  set  of 
association  neurones  is  needed  there,  and  the  failure 
to  co-ordinate  knowledge  and  action  there  costs  the 
lives  of  many  and  the  happiness  of  millions  every 
year. 

A  fourth  essential  feature  of  this  remedy  for  the 
relaxed  and  inefficient  moral  conditions  which  pre- 
vail and  must  continue  to  prevail  as  long  as  we 
go  on  in  the  same  old  way  is  this. 

(4)  The  remedy  must  be  applied  in  youth  if  it  is 
to  be  most  efEcacioiis.  The  reason  for  that  also  is 
physiological.  It  rests  in  the  peculiar  nature  of 
the  brain  tissue  and  the  laws  which  govern  it.  In 
a  general  way  we  are  all  familiar  v^^ith  the  state- 
ment that  "youth  is  the  time  for  improvement," 
but  it  may  be  well  to  refresh  our  minds  as  to  why 
that  is  so.  To  gain  a  just  appreciation  of  that  is  to 
redouble  our  efforts  in  behalf  of  the  bo3^s  and  girls  of 
to-day.    The}^,  as  the  men  and  women  of  to-morrow, 


WHZ     THEY     FAIL  143 

will  be  largely  what  we  make  them.  The  future  is, 
therefore,  in  our  hands,  and  we  being  dead  must  yet 
go  on  speaking.  How  great  is  our  responsibility  and 
how  glorious  is  our  opportunity! 

If  you  were  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  the  heroes 
and  heroines  of  the  Cross  and  go  into  the  heart  of 
heathen  China  with  those  two  dear  little  children  of 
yours,  who  are  just  now  preparing  to  enter  a  kin- 
dergarten school,  you  would  find  that  though  you 
labored  diligently  with  all  your  full-blown  powers 
for  many  hours  each  day  on  that  marvelously 
crooked  and  difficult  language,  that  long  before  you 
had  begun  to  do  anything  with  it  those  flaxen-haired 
pets  would  be  exchanging  confidences  over  their 
mud  pies  with  their  diminutive  almond-eyed  neigh- 
bors. And  if  you  stayed  there  all  the  rest  of  your 
life  and  devoted  yourself  assiduously  to  the  study 
of  that  tongue,  the  chances  are  you  would  never 
have  as  fluent  a  command  of  it  as  would  your  chil- 
dren to  whom  it  came  like  their  food  and  raiment, 
without  worry  or  toil. 

Now  why  is  that?  The  reason  is  found  in  the  fact 
that  your  brain,  by  the  time  it  got  to  China,  was  not 
only  tougher  and  less  impressionable  than  those  of 
the  children,  but  that  it  had  already  gotten  a  great 
number  of  tracks  ready-made  into  which  nervous 
influences  easily  slipped,  according  to  that  law  which 
orders  that  all  forces  shall  take  the  path  of  least 
resistance.  Your  brain,  by  years  of  training  has 
been  built  and  shaped  to  receive  western  sounds  and 
western  ideas.  As  it  is  thus,  from  a  Chinese  lan- 
guage standpoint  not  only  malformed,  but  older  and 
tougher,  and  less  responsive  to  and  less  retentive  of, 
the  new  thing  whatever  it  be,  the  child  has  naturally 
a  long  advantage.  Any  piano  teacher  will  tell  you 
that  he  or  she  would  rather  have  as  a  pupil  a  child 


144  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

which  had  never  seen  a  piano  than  to  have  one  vi^ho 
had  been  wrongly  instructed. 

It  is  amazing  and  mortifying  to  find  how  the 
habits  of  early  childhood  cling  to  us  and  trip  us  up 
in  manhood.  Years  of  vigilance  and  self-control 
will  be  undone  in  some  exciting  moment  by  a  word 
that  betrays  the  plebeian  origin.  The  burr  will  stick 
in  the  speech,  the  gaucherie  will  come  out  in  some 
ill-chosen  article  of  dress.  "If  the  period  between 
twenty  and  thirty  is  the  critical  one  in  the  forma- 
tion of  intellectual  and  professional  habits,"  says 
an  eminent  psychologist,  "the  period  below  twenty 
is  more  important  still  for  the  fixing  of  personal 
habits,  properly  so-called,  such  as  vocalization  and 
pronunciation,  gesture,  motion  and  address.  Hardly 
ever  is  a  language  spoken  after  twenty  spoken  with- 
out a  foreign  accent ;  hardly  ever  can  a  youth  trans- 
ferred to  the  society  of  his  betters  unlearn  the  na- 
sality and  other  vices  of  speech  bred  in  him  by  the 
associations  of  his  growing  years;  hardly  ever  in- 
deed, no  matter  how  much  money  there  be  in  his 
pocket  can  he  learn  to  dress  like  the  gentleman 
born." 

Leland  tells  us  the  like  thing  regarding  other  mus- 
cles. From  seven  to  fourteen  years  of  age,  he  says, 
(the  most  active  period  of  growth  of  that  part  of  the 
brain  co-ordinating  the  muscles  of  the  hand)  a 
dexterity  is  acquired  which  diminishes  with  suc- 
ceeding years.  This  is  the  golden  age  of  education. 
The  body  is  being  built  and  what  you  v/ant  in  it  in 
manhood  should  be  built  into  it  then.  The  child  that 
goes  through  those  years  suffering  from  malnutri- 
tion will  never  have  the  body  in  adult  life  which  it 
would  have  had  had  it  been  well  fed,  no  matter 
how  carefully  it  may  be  fed  and  tended  in  later  life. 
The  metabolism  of  the  body  is  changed.  It  has  an 
altered  set   which   is  not  what  it   should  and  would 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  145 

otherwise  have  been.  Nature  will  do  the  best  pos- 
sible for  us  every  time,  but  once  she  has  done  the 
best  with  the  materials  we  have  given  her  during 
those  tender  years  of  construction,  she  will  never 
pull  down  the  house  to  build  it  again,  however  she 
may  labor  to  modify  some  of  its  parts.  The  body 
receives  its  shape  during  the  construction   period. 

Dr.  Carpenter,  the  eminent  physiologist  and 
anatomist,  has  given  us  words  of  wisdom  on  this 
point  in  his  "Mental  Physiology,"  p339f. 

"It  is  a  matter  of  universal  experience  that  every 
kind  of  training  for  special  aptitudes  is  both  far 
more  effective,  and  leaves  a  more  permanent  im- 
press, when  exerted  on  the  grozving  organism  than 
when  brought  to  bear  on  the  adult.  The  effect  of 
such  training  is  shown  in  the  tendency  of  the  or- 
ganization to  'grow  to'  the  mode  in  which  it  is 
habitually  exercised;  as  is  evidenced  by  the  in- 
creased size  and  power  of  particular  muscles,  and 
the  extraordinary  flexibility  of  joints,  which  are  ac- 
quired by  such  as  have  been  early  exercised  in  gym- 
nastic performances.  There  is  no  part  of  the  organ- 
ism of  man  in  which  the  reconstructive  activity  is 
so  great,  during  the  whole  period  of  life,  as  it  is  in 
the  ganglionic  substance  of  the  brain.  This  is  in- 
dicated by  the  enormous  supply  of  blood  which  it 
receives.  .  .  .  It  is  moreover  a  fact  of  great 
significance  that  the  nerve  substance  is  especially 
distinguished  by  its  reparative  power.  For  while 
injuries  of  other  tissues  (such  as  the  muscular) 
which  are  distinguished  by  the  specialty  of  their 
structure  and  endowments,  are  repaired  by  sub- 
stance of  a  lower  or  less  specialized  type,  those  of 
nerve  svibstance  are  repaired  by  a  complete  repro- 
duction of  the  normal  tissue ;  as  is  evidenced  by  the 
sensibility  of  the  newly-formed  skin." 

After    noting    that    this    reconstruction    is    always 


146  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

according  to  a  "determinate  type"  he  says:  "But 
this  type  is  pecuHarly  liable  to  modification  during 
the  early  period  of  life,  in  which  the  functional 
activity  of  the  nervous  system  (and  particularly  of 
the  brain)  is  extraordinarily  great,  and  the  recon- 
structive process  proportionately  active.     .     .     . 

"There  is  no  reason  to  regard  the  cerebrum  as  an 
exception  to  the  general  principle,  that,  while  each 
part  of  the  organism  tends  to  form  itself,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  mode  in  which  it  is  habitually  ever- 
cised,  this  tendency  will  be  especially  strong  in  the 
nervous  apparatus,    in    virtue    of   that    incessant   re- 
generation which  is  the  very   condition  of   its   func- 
tional activity.    It  scarcely,  indeed,  admits  of  doubt 
that  every  state  of  ideational  consciousness  which 
is  very  strong  or    is    habitually    repeated    leaves    an 
organic  impression  on  the  cerebrum  ;  in  virtue  of 
which  that  same  state  may  be  reproduced  at  any 
time,  in  respondence  to  a  suggestion  fitted  to  excite 
it.     .     .     .     The  strength  of  early  association  is  a 
fact  so  universally  recognized  that  the  expression 
of  it  has  become  proverbial;  and  this  precisely  ac- 
cords with  the  physiological  principle  that,  during 
the  period  of  growth  and  development,  the  formative 
activity  of  the  brain  will  be  most  amenable  to  direct- 
ing influences.     It  is  in  this  way  that  what  is  early 
learned  'by  heart'  becomes  branded  in   (as  it  were) 
upon  the  cerebrum ;  so  that  its  traces  are  never  lost, 
even  though  the  conscious  memory  of  it  may  have 
faded  out.     For  when  the  organized  modification 
has  been  once  fixed  in  the  growing  brain,  it  becomes 
a  part  of  the  normal  fabric,  and  is  regularly  main- 
tained by   nutritive   substitution;  so  that   it  may   en- 
dure to  the  end  of  life  like  the  scar  of  a  wound." 

It  would  certainly  not  be  fair  to  the  fact  to  say 
that  the  importance  of  childhood  has  been  sadly 
overlooked.    This  century  has  been  more  than  once 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  147 

hailed  as  belonging  to  the  children  so  far  as  edu- 
cation is  concerned  ;  but  all  the  extra  energy  born 
of  the  shifting  emphasis  has  gone  down  the  same  old 
unprofitable  hole.     What  we  need  is  to  hear  more 
about  the  unbounded  opportunities  afifordcd  us  to 
shape  the  destinies  of  to-morrow  and  then  get  wiser 
in  shaping  the  character  of  its  men  to-day.     For  there 
is  absolutely  no  day  like  this  one.    The  chances  we 
lose  can  never  be  regained.     If  we  fail  the  failure  is 
most  deplorable  because  no  after  years  can,  under 
any  possible  circumstances,  do  so  much  for  the  man 
who  must  follow  us  and  take  up  our  burdens.    The 
brain  receives  its  "set"  while  it  is  growing.     There 
is  so  much  solemn  meaning  in  this  fact,  such  dread 
significance,  that  a  second  quotation  from  Dr.  Car- 
penter will  surely  not  be  out  of  the  way. 

"From  the  time  that  the  brain  has  attained  its 
full  maturity,  the  acquirement  of  new  modes  of  ac- 
tion and  the  discontinuance  of  those  which  have 
become  habitual,  are  alike  difficult.  Both  the  in- 
tellectual and  moral  character  have  become  in  a 
great  degree  fixed ;  so  that  although  new  impres- 
sions are  being  constantly  received,  they  have  much 
less  power  in  directly  psychical  action  than  they 
had  at  an  earlier  period — that  course  being  hence- 
forth rather  determined  by  the  established  uniformi- 
ties, and  by  the  volitional  power  of  selected  atten- 
tion. The  readiness  with  which  new  knowledge  is 
now  acquired  depends  much  more  on  the  degree 
in  which  it  "fits  in"  with  those  previous  habits  of 
thought,  which  are  the  expression  of  the  nutritive 
maintenance  of  the  cerebral  mechanism,  than  it  does 
upon  the  recording  power  which  expresses  a  new 
formation." 

The  confirmation  of  that  paragraph  is  not  far  to 
seek.  Recall,  if  you  can,  one  new  idea  countering 
the  received  ideas  of  its  time  which  did  not  have  to 


148  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

fight  for  its  life.  And  the  older  we  get  the  harder 
it  is  to  get  a  new  idea  into  the  warp  and  woof  of 
our  natures — unless  of  course  they  "fit  in"  with  our 
preconceived  notions.  People  are  "strangers"  to  us 
simply  because  they  have  to  be  "fitted  in"  to  our 
modes  of  thought  and  feeling.  To  be  the  friend  of 
a  friend  is  a  mighty  help  toward  our  acquaintance 
for  that  very  reason. 

Apropos  of  the  thought  expressed  by  Dr.  Car- 
penter, a  very  terse  and  pungent  paragraph  from 
Prof.  Starbuck  may  be  made.  He  is  speaking  of  the 
importance  of  youth  as  the  time  to  get  in  our  work 
of  moral  training  in  the  public  school. 

"It  is  next  to  impossible  to  reform  an  old,  ex- 
perienced sinner,  a  political  traitor,  or  a  social 
grafter  of  threescore  years.  His  spinal  cord  is  thor- 
oughly organized  around  evil  and  all  the  atoms  of 
his  being  play  in  tune  to  unworthy  impulses.  To 
make  him  over  into  a  righteous  citizen  is  about  as 
impossible  as  to  hope  to  harvest  luscious  fruit  from 
a  gnarled  and  blasted  tree.  Nothing  short  of  fire 
in  this  world  or  the  next  will  purge  him ;  and  when 
the  purging  is  done,  there  is  left  no  more  of  good 
than  is  to  be  found  in  the  little  child  and  that  with- 
out promise  of  a  rich  and  beautiful  future.  The 
one  great  hope  of  social  evolution  is  in  beginning 
afresh  with  each  new  generation  of  children." 

And  if  anything  further  be  needed  to  prove  the 
unparalleled  meaning  of  youthful  years,  the  reader 
is  referred  to  the  inductive  studies  of  conversion  and 
religious  experience  as  presented  by  men  like  Prof. 
Starbuck,  Coe  and  Lancaster.  They  will  tell  you 
that  the  cold  facts  gathered  up  by  them  show  that 
all  years  are  not  the  same  when  it  comes  to  entering 
the  Kingdom  of  God.  That  belongs  very  largely  to 
the  years  between  ten  and  twenty-five,  with  the 
majority    of    conversions    occurring    under    sixteen. 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  149 

From  sixteen  they  decline  rapidly  to  twenty  and 
beyond  thirty  are  rare  occurrences.  Out  of  1784  con- 
versions, Prof.  Coe  found  the  average  age  of  con- 
version to  be  16.4  years.  It  is  at  this  age,  i.  e.,  just 
before  and  including  sixteen  "there  takes  place  a 
transformation  more  profound  than  any  other  be- 
tween birth  and  death." 

However,  this  book  is  concerned  with  education, 
not  evangelism.  Let  no  one  confuse  the  issue  and  in 
haste  throw  the  book  down  under  the  impression 
that  the  writer  has  missed  the  mark  entirely  and 
is  preaching  a  gospel  of  culture  instead  of  a  gospel 
of  regeneration  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  It  is  pre- 
cisely because  he  does  believe  in  the  great  atoning 
Cross  as  the  only  hope  of  the  world  that  he  has 
been  at  pains  to  write  these  lines. 

The  old  system  of  education  has  failed,  not  be- 
cause it  is  wrong,  but  because  it  is  incomplete.  In 
the  high  places  they  have  discovered  this  and  are 
seeking  to  add  to  their  pedagogical  arsenal  the  new 
weapon  of  reflex  action.  Prof.  Shailer  Matthews, 
Dean  of  the  Divinity  School  of  Chicago  University, 
urges  that  seminary  students  spend  less  time,  say 
twelve  to  sixteen  hours  a  week,  in  the  class-room, 
and  most  of  the  balance  of  the  time  in  practical  re- 
ligious work  under  a  director  of  practical  work — 
boys'  club,  settlement  work,  charity  organizations, 
or  other  form  of  social  action.  What  is  that  but 
the  manual  training  principle  (that  we  best  learn 
anything  by  doing  it)  applied  to  theological 
training? 

In  Forman  College,  India,  students  are  being 
similarly  taught  practical  Christianity  by  social  ac- 
tion. In  national  calamities,  such  as  earthquakes  or 
famines,  they  are  sent  out  collecting  grain  or  find- 
ing out  who  are  really  most  needy.  Is  it  malaria 
that  oppresses  the  poor?    Then  they  find  them  out 


150  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

and  administer  practical  Christianity  in  the  form  of 
quinine.  Is  it  the  plague?  Then  they  inoculate  the 
people  wholesale,  write  letters  for  the  sick  in  the 
hospital,  and  when  they  go  home  for  the  vacation, 
open  up  a  school  for  the  illiterate.  Is  it  any  wonder 
Prof.  D.  J.  Fleming,  M.A.,  of  that  institution  should 
say,  "This  experience  better  than  any  lecture 
brought  before  those  students  the  poverty  and  suf- 
fering of  the  submerged  classes  and  inspired  them 
with  a  desire  to  alleviate  their  social,  moral  and 
physical  condition." 

But  why,  we  ask,  did  that  "inspire"  them?  Be- 
cause correlated  motor  discharges  give  "vividness" 
to  any  idea;  because  action  is  the  normal  comple- 
ment to  every  impression ;  and  because  pleasure  at- 
tends the  natural  functioning  of  any  part  of  our 
physical  nature,  being  in  line  with  growth  and  prog- 
ress. Who  can  but  praise  the  wisdom  of  those 
educators  who  are  thus  indeed  trying  to  get  their 
religion  out  of  the  cloister  and  into  the  market-place, 
and  what  man  is  there  but  feels  in  his  soul  that  what 
they  have  done  is  right  and  bound  to  produce  a  bet- 
ter type  of  parson  than  the  one  whose  nose  has  been 
screwed  down  to  books  throughout  his  theological 
covirse  ? 

Even  the  very  penitentiaries  are  catching  a  gleam 
of  the  coming  day  and  preaching  a  new  gospel  of 
hope — that  the  criminil  be  taught  to  respect  him- 
self, being  made  worthy  of  his  own  self-respect  by 
the  mastery  of  a  trade  which  will  give  him  the  means 
of  livelihood  when  he  gets  out,  and  while  he  is  in 
will  enable  him  to  discharge  in  some  measure  as  a 
man,  those  obligations  to  support  his  family  from 
which  he  cannot  be  absolved  by  the  accident  of 
his  incarceration.  As  Warden  McClaughrey,  of 
Fort  Leavenworth,  Kas.,  puts  it:  "The  new  crimi- 
nology aims  at  nothing  less  than  the  suppression  of 


WHY     THEY     F'AIi:  151 

evil  habits  and  the  replacing  of  them  by  their  op- 
posites ;  in  other  words  the  wearing  of  paths  in  the 
brain  which  shall  ofifer  less  resistance  than  the  old 
familiar  paths  ;  the  creation  of  new  habits  of  thought, 
speech  and  action,  wnth  or  without  the  consent  of 
the  convict  himself.  This  is  a  task  of  tremendous 
difficulty.    It  is  revolution  by  means  of  evolution." 

Shall  seminaries  and  penitentiaries,  belated  fol- 
lowers of  all  who  have  taught  in  practical  fields  from 
the  days  of  Tubal  Cain  to  our  own,  hear  the  une- 
quivocal dictum  of  that  Voice  which  speaks  with  an 
authority  that  no  man  can  gainsay  or  resist,  and 
our  churches  and  Sunday-schools  alone  remain  deaf 
as  an  adder  to  the  cry?    We  believe  not. 

"The  chief  end  of  man  is  an  action  not  a  thought," 
says  Carlyle,  and  Emerson,  his  friend,  adds,  "Ac- 
tion is  education."  So  it  is,  and  right  action  is  right 
education.  It  is  our  business,  if  we  would  truly  ed- 
ucate the  young,  to  map  out  for  them  those  courses 
of  action  which  will  not  only  give  practical  content 
and  value  to  our  precepts,  but  by  their  reflex  action 
give  power  and  disposition  to  do  the  like  when  they, 
have  come  to  man's  estate. 


152  WHY     THEY     FAIL 


Foreword  to  Chapter  V 

"Every  mason  in  the  quarry,  every  builder  on  the 

shore, 
Every  chopper  in  the  palm  grove,  every  raftsman 

at  the  oar; 
Hewing  wood  or  drawing  water,  splitting  stones 

or  cleaving  sod, 
Fill  the  dusty  ranks  of  labor  in  the  regiment  of  God ; 
March    together    toward    his    triumph,    do    the    task 

his  hands  prepare, 
Honest  toil  is  holy  service,  faithful  work  is  praise 

and  prayer." 


CHAPTER  V 

A    CONTRIBUTION 

It  is  one  thing  to  recognize  a  need  but  quite  an- 
other to  see  just  how  that  need  is  to  be  met.  Men 
in  all  ages  have  recognized  the  fact  that  to  be  able 
to  fly  would  be  highly  advantageous.  Many  vain 
attempts  to  do  so  were  made  by  the  Darius  Greens 
of  invention,  but  the  essential  principle  of  levita- 
tion  escaped  them  until  very  recently,  and  even 
then,  when  that  principle  was  discovered,  it  re- 
mained a  useless  bit  of  information  till  the  Lang- 
leys,  Wrights,  Curtisses,  and  others  found  tangible 
means  of  linking  it  with  human  affairs.  Mechanical 
principles  are  of  little  use  unless  we  know  how  to 
apply  them.  And  so  with  these  principles  under 
discussion.  The  need  has  been  made  manifest,  the 
principles  calculated  to  meet  it  have  been  set  forth, 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  153 

but  we  shall  not  on  that  account  get  any  "forrader" 
unless  we  find  helpful  ways  of  applying  the  one  to 
the  other. 

Now  that  is  not  perhaps  so  simple  as  it  looks. 
Years  of  patient,  painstaking  toil  were  spent  in  per- 
fecting the  first  heavier-than-air  flying  machine 
after  it  was  discovered  that  that  was  the  thing  to 
have,  and  there  is  still  much  to  be  done  to  it  before 
it  becomes  dangerous  to  steam  and  electric  trac- 
tion dividends.  So  it  may  be  that  the  finding  of  the 
proper  means  of  expression  for  the  ethical  emotions 
and  ideas  we  have  been  creating  in  the  home,  the 
church  and  its  subsidiary  organizations,  particu- 
larly the  Sunday-school,  will  not  be  apparent  at  a 
glance.  That  must  come  by  a  process  of  intel- 
lectual evolution,  by  a  long  process  of  intellectual 
invention.  There  must  be  the  usual  experience  of 
elimination  and  a  growing  scrap-heap.  Better 
methods  can  be  built  only  on  the  ruins  of  the  old. 
Natural  selection  and  survival  of  the  fit  will  here, 
as  elsewhere,  operate  to  produce  ever  finer  types, 
so  that  our  best  attempts  will  appear  in  twenty 
years  or  less  almost  grotesque,  and  much  as  a  Watt 
engine  looks  beside  a  Corliss.  But  no  one  on  that 
account  despises  the  Watt  or  forgets  that  it  was  a  long 
advance  on  the  traction  methods  of  its  day. 

In  this  chapter  the  writer  presents  for  what  it  is 
worth  a  small  contribution  toward  that  great  sec- 
ondary problem  of  finding  adequate  means  of  trans- 
lating good  impression  into  correlative  good  action 
in  order  that  the  brain  of  the  pupil  may  achieve  a 
balanced  ethical  development,  ethical  action  and 
association  neurones  being  built  up  to  correspond 
in  number,  variety  and  power  to  those  ideational 
and  emotional  cells  we  have  endeavored  so  assidu- 
ously and  successfully  to  create.  Can  we  but  ac- 
complish that  we  shall  find  the  world  immeasurably 


154  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

the  better  for  our  having  done  it.  Our  successors  in 
ofifice  will  find  it  much  easier  to  be  good  than  we 
ever  found  it,  and  if  they  be  not  ungrateful  they 
will  bless  us  accordingly.  The  new  contribution 
comes  in  the  shape  of  a  new  organization. 

"Mercy  on  us!"  "Heaven  help  us!"  'The 
dear  saints  forgive  him!"  do  we  hear  you  cry? 
Dear,  distracted,  overburdened  worker,  stooping 
now  under  the  burden  of  more  meetings  than  you 
can  carry,  wait  a  bit.  Do  not  hang  the  writer  till 
you  have  read  this  chapter  through.  The  case  is 
really  nothing  like  so  bad  as  it  looks — mainly  be- 
cause he  was  a  fellow  sufferer  with  you  and  there- 
fore was  able  to  sympathize  with  those  who  are 
overburdened. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  correct  to  say  that  the  new 
comer  is  an  institution  rather  than  an  organization. 
It  has  a  name,  of  course,  since  it  couldn't  get  along 
very  well  without  one.  It  is  called  The  Industrial 
Guild  of  the  Great  Commission.  That  is  a  pretty 
big  name  to  be  sure ;  but  then  "there  are  others." 
For  instance,  The  Baptist  Young  People's  Union  of 
America;  The  Epworth  League  of  Christian  En- 
deavor; The  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty 
to  Animals ;  The  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel  in  Distant  Parts ;  The  Independent  Order  of 
Good  Templars ;  The  Ancient  Order  of  Free  and 
Accepted  Masons,  to  say  nothing  of  a  score  of  others 
more  or  less  renowned.  In  fact,  it  v^ould  seem  that 
a  society  to  make  progress  at  all  must  spread  a  good 
deal  of  sail  to  the  breeze. 

The  emblem  of  the  Industrial  Guild  of  the  Great 
Commission  is  the  world  upon  a  coin  and  its  motto 
consists  of  the  two  simple  and  significant  words  of 
cur  Savior  in  his  last  Great  Commission,  "Go  Ye." 
The  Guild  is  therefore,  as  its  name  would  imply,  a 
missionary  institution.     The  reason  for  that  is,  that, 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  155 

as  its  work  is  mainly  educational,  it  is  necessary  to 
give  it  the  proper  horizon.  Any  education  which 
does  not  embrace  the  world,  is,  in  this  twentieth 
century,  incomplete  and  insufficient  for  the  needs 
of  the  day.  The  very  clerks  in  the  business  houses 
down  town  must  now  do  their  work  with  one  finger 
on  an  atlas  of  the  world.  Nothing  so  lifts  the  soul 
out  of  itself  as  the  challenge  of  a  great  enterpri  . 
As  James  ]\Iartineau  observes,  "  A  soul  occupied 
with  great  ideas  best  performs  small  duties."  If  we 
would  raise  a  race  of  imperial  men  we  must  set  be- 
fore them  an  imperial  horizon.  The  parish  boun- 
dary will  not  do.  Hence,  the  world  is  our  domain. 
I  The  I.  G.  G.  C.  is  therefore  a  missionar}  institu- 
tion. It  seeks  to  give  effect  to  the  Savior's  parting 
injunction,  "Go  ye  into  all  the  world,  and  make  dis- 
ciples of  all  nations."  This  it  seeks  to  accomplish 
in  two  ways  (a)  by  making  some  ready  money  for 
the  purpose,  ince  that  is  an  imperative  need  of  the 
hour,  and  (b)  by  helping  to  raise  a  new  race  of  men 
and  women  who  shall  recognize  their  world  obliga- 
tions and  stand  up  to  them.  That  is,  the  I.  G.  G.  C. 
has  two  functions,  one  of  which  is  financial  and  the 
other  educational.  In  it  we  make  money  for  mis- 
sions it  is  true,  but  we  make  money  in  order  to 
make  men  and  women  in  the  making  of  it.  The 
making  of  the  money  is,  with  us,  so  far  as  our 
juniors  are  concerned,  everything;  the  money  itself, 
if  it  goes  to  that,  is  a  mere  incidental,  though  poten- 
tially by  no  means  a  small  one. 

The  I.  G.  G.  C.  recognizes  several  great  facts  such 
as  these  as  fundamental  reasons  for  its  existence ; 
That  the  ^Master  said,  ''Go  ye  into  all  the  world." 
That  we  have  not  gone.  After  nineteen  centuries 
he  still  waits  for  his  wishes  to  be  given  effect.  That 
back  of  that  Great  Task  which  he  has  given  us  there 
lies  a  great  Problem,  that  of  finance.    That  the  Task 


156  1VHY     THEY     FAIL 

will  never  be  done  till  we  first  solve  that  problem 
of  finance.  That  it  is  possible  to  solve  that  great 
problem  of  finance  without  burdening  anybody,  and  in- 
deed, without  making  any  one  any  poorer.  And  that  if 
this  Task  is  ever  to  be  done,  it  will  be  done  by  a 
race  of  men  who  have  been  properly  trained  to  the 
Task,  i.  e,,  by  men  who  not  only  know  what  they 
ought  to  do  but  are  ethically,  and  shall  we  not  say 
physically,  able  to  do  it. 

That  the  Master  told  us  to  go,  that  we  haven't 
yet  gone  effectively,  and  that  we  cannot  go  without 
money  needs  no  discussion,  but  a  word  or  two  may 
be  said  about  some  of  the  other  propositions.  For 
instance,  this  one,  that  the  problem  of  missions  is 
chiefly  one  of  finance  to-day.  Were  our  Mission- 
ary Boards  able  to  say,  we  have  fifty  millions  in 
our  treasury  and  we  want  men  and  women  to  give 
their  lives  to  the  carrying  out  of  Christ's  last 
command,  candidates  would  come  forward  in  swarms. 
They  would  rise  up  in  every  hamlet  and  offer 
themselves.  When  Dr.  A.  B.  Simpson,  of  the  Chris- 
tian and  Missionary  Alliance,  made  one  of  his 
great  appeals  for  money,  and  seventy  thousand  dollars 
was  laid  on  the  altar  in  one  day,  he  followed  it 
with  an  appeal  for  men  and  women  to  devote  their 
lives  to  the  Great  Task,  and  one  hundred  men  and 
■women  in  that  one  congregation  rose  up  saying, 
"Here  am  I,  send  me." 

And  it  will  not  do  to  say  that  such  mushroom 
candidates  are  not  fit  for  the  work.  Who  is,  in  his 
raw  state  when  he  is  first  caught?  But  they  could 
be  trained  and  made  fit  to  serve  in  some  capacity. 
One  of  the  chief  needs  of  China  at  the  present  hour 
is  that  of  Christian  public-school  teachers. 

Another  statement  which  probably  requires  eluci- 
dation is  that  one  to  the  effect  that  this  money  could 
be  raised  without  making  anybody  the  poorer.  The 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  157 

basis  of  that  statement  is  this:  There  is  enough 
time  and  economic  opportunity  going  to  waste 
every  year  to  evangehze  the  world  if  we  would 
simply  organize  our  forces  sufficiently  to  put  them 
to  economic  use.  It  is  that  great  fund  of  spare  time 
which  the  Industrial  Guild  proposes  to  tap  to 
profit  withal.  This  for  two  reasons,  first  because 
it  ought  to  be  tapped,  and  secondly  because  incomes 
and  bank-accounts  belong  by  prior  right  to  the  other 
organizations.  That  is  their  legitimate  field  and  it 
would  not  be  fair  to  encroach  on  it.  Again,  there 
would  be  no  sense  in  raising  up  another  organiza- 
tion to  do  what  is  already  being  done,  or  what  others 
already  in  existence  are  well  calculated  to  do.  More- 
over, the  I.  G.  G.  C.  would  defeat  its  own  ends  if 
it  sought  to  work  by  their  methods.  It  is  only 
as  it  sticks  religiously  to  its  own  field  of  action  and 
does  its  work  in  its  own  way  that  it  has  any 
meaning  at  all,  or  any  right  to  exist.  It  is  not  de- 
signed to  take  the  place  of  any  organization  already 
existing  or  to  interfere  with  them  in  any  way.  It  is 
in  no  sense  a  substitute  for  anything  we  have  and 
its  sphere  of  action  is  quite  distinct  from  that  of 
the  ordinary  church  activities.  So  much  might  be 
expected  from  the  nature  of  the  fundamentum,  its 
express  purpose  of  educating  not  by  precept  but  by 
action. 

In  its  present  stage  of  development  the  I.  G.  G.  C. 
is  adapted  to  the  rural  and  semi-rural  communities 
rather  than  to  the  urban.  No  serious  attempt  has 
yet  been  made  to  apply  it  to  the  conditions  pre- 
vailing in  our  congested  centers  of  population.  To 
meet  those  highly  specialized  and  difficult  condi- 
tions radical  changes  would  no  doubt  have  to  be 
made  in  its  method  of  working,  if  indeed,  something 
entirely  difi"erent  would  not  be  better.  But  for  rural 
and  semi-rural   conditions,  the   I.  G.   G.   C.   seems 


158  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

peculiarly  well  fitted.  Of  course  there  is  a  section 
of  the  city-church  constituency  in  which  it  would 
be  possible  to  operate  the  Guild,  but  so  far  as  we  are 
concerned  just  now  the  big  cities  may  be  left  out 
of  count. 

Perhaps  they  won't  mind  being  left  out  of  count 
for  once  while  their  rural  neighbors  for  once  get  a 
chance.  The  country  church  and  district  have  never 
yet  come  to  their  own.  Everything  good  seems 
to  go  to  the  city  ai.d  the  city  church,  passing 
through  the  rural  districts  just  as  fast  as  the  ex- 
press trains  can  carry  them ;  and  apparently  the 
only  reason  why  they  don't  go  through  faster  is 
because  the  express  trains  haven't  the  steam.  Of 
course  the  reason  for  that  is  that  more  ears  can 
be  had  in  a  day  in  the  city  than  could  be  reached  in 
a  week  in  the  country.  The  neighbors  are  close 
together,  and  if  not,  they  have  means  of  rapid  tran- 
sit which  amounts  to  the  same  thing  so  far  as  a 
meeting  is  concerned. 

For  all  that,  it  is  time  the  rural  districts  got  a 
chance.  The  cities  and  the  nation  are  immeasurably 
indebted  to  them.  Many  of  the  very  finest  people 
on  God's  green  earth  live  in  the  country.  There 
are  myriads  of  noble  hearts  there.  The  country  boy 
may  or  may  not  have  burrs  in  his  hair  and  in  his 
speech,  but  he  is  apt  to  have  a  heart  of  gold,  and 
it  is  much  better  for  humanity  that  a  boy  should 
have  burrs  in  his  manners  and  be  golden  at  heart 
than  to  be  golden  in  manners  and  have  a  heart 
full  of  weeds. 

The  fact  is  we  have  never  yet  sufficiently  recog- 
nized the  value  of  our  rural  inheritance  nor  planned 
adequately  for  its  development.  The  best  that  is 
in  our  cities  has  come  from  the  country  districts, 
not  from  foreign  ports,  and  the  biggest  balance 
wheel  the  nation  has  is  its  farmer's  vote,  whatever 


WHY,     THEY     FAIL  159 

may  be  said  to  "tickle  the  ears  of  the  groundlings. ' 
When  the  Anti-Saloon  League  set  out  to  down 
the  liquor  octopus  which  has  been  slowly  strangling 
the  nation  in  her  cities,  they  began  in  the  country. 
They  recognized  that  the  cities  were  corrupt  and 
controlled  by  graft,  vice  and  whiskey,  and  that 
the  only  possible  source  of  cleansing  the  slime  was 
by  turning  into  them  the  purer  waters  from  the 
waving  cornfields  and  upland  meadows.  They 
recognized  the  fact  that  three  votes  to  one  are  rural 
in  this  country  after  all,  notwithstanding  the  smoke 
from  mighty  chimneys  darkening  the  sky,  and  the 
masts  of  our  commerce  in  city  ports,  and  all  the 
uproar  of  traffic  and  the  great  power  wielded  by 
city  dailies  and  city-made  magazines.  The  vote 
is  what  counts  in  the  last  analysis,  and  the  League 
did  a  shrewd  stroke  of  business  when  it  began  to 
cinch  up  the  cities  with  that  rural  vote.  The  result 
of  the  policy  has  been  felt  in  too  many  states  to 
need  Turther  comment  here. 

Three  things  the  L  G.  G.  C.  takes  into  account 
in  selecting,  like  the  x*\nti-Saloon  League,  the  rural 
districts  and  small  towns  for  its  chief  sphere  of 
action ;  the  first  is  that  the  country  has  been  rela- 
tively neglected;  the  second  is  that  it  is  the  chief 
source  of  the  nation's  wealth  in  manhood,  in  food- 
stuffs, in  raw  material,  and  also  from  our  stand- 
point, in  economic  opportunities ;  and  the  third  is 
that  the  ethical  and  spiritual  dry  rot  is  extending 
downward  and  outward  till  it  invades  that  last  cita- 
del of  the  nation's  righteousness,  the  country  home. 
iThe  hired  man  has  about  quit  going  to  church. 

It  is  not  an  idle  thing  that  President  Roosevelt's 
Rural  Commission  should,  in  its  finding,  tell  us  that 
the  country  school  and  the  country  church  are 
the  centers  from  which  psychical  helpfulness  must 
come  to  the  rural  neighborhood.    But  if  the  country 


160  WHZ     THEY     FAIL 

church  is  to  be  most  helpful  she  must  herself  be 
helped.  Some  way  must  be  found  by  which  the 
inspiration  of  our  great  gatherings  and  our  great 
leaders  can  be  brought  to  bear  more  directly  on  the 
rural  neighborhood  through  the  rural  church.  A 
colossal  task  that  beyond  question,  chiefly  because 
of  the  long  hours  on  the  farm  and  the  endless 
chores. 

Perhaps  in  this  case  "the  longest  way  'round" 
may  be  found  "the  shortest  way  home"  and  the 
I.  G.  G.  C.  policy  of  saving  the  man  of  to-morrow 
by  going  after  the  boy  of  to-day  may  be  the  truest 
solution  of  the  difficulty.  If  we  can  only  once  get  a 
race  of  men  who  will  be  delivered  from  the  thrall- 
dom  of  mere  things,  everything  else  will  fall  into  its 
right  place  and  there  will  be  found  time  for  the 
higher  goods. 

That  is  one  of  the  ends  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  has  in 
view  so  far  as  the  juveniles  of  our  extra-urban  com- 
munities are  concerned.  And  when  we  speak  for 
extra-urban  communities,  that  is  for  communities 
having  anywhere  up  to  eight  thousand  population, 
we  are  speaking,  according  to  the  United  States 
census  of  ten  years  ago,  of  two-thirds  of  the  popu- 
lation of  the  United  States.  Also,  when  speaking 
generally  of  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  work  it  will  be  under- 
stood of  course  that  whatever  is  said  of  the  boy 
applies,  mutatis  mutandis,  to  his  sister.  Since  it  is 
inconvenient  to  be  saying  the  boy  and  the  girl  all 
the  time,  we  shall  let  the  boy  do  as  his  father 
has  had  to  do  in  politics,  but  as  he  assuredly  by 
the  drift  of  things  will  not  have  to  do  later — let 
him  represent  the  girl  also. 

In  its  conception  of  ethical  education  the  I.  G. 
G.  C.  recognizes  four  great  qualities  as  being  the 
cardinal  points  in  the  compass  of  an  imperial  char- 
acter.    These  are  manliness,  honesty,  beneficence 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  161 

and  practicality.  There  are  of  course  many  other 
shining  qualities,  such  as  industry,  neatness,  accur- 
acy, punctuality,  obedience,  regularity,  etc.  but 
these  points  are  merely  supplementary;  they  are 
not  the  grand  essentials.  Abe  Reuf  or  a  highway- 
man might  and  probably  does,  possess  them  all. 
Incidentally  they  are  valuable  in  life's  training  but 
they  do  not  make  the  man.  They  adorn  him ;  they 
make  him  more  efficient,  but  they  do  not  constitute 
his  manhood  and  character.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  you  get  a  man  in  whom  manliness,  honesty,  bene- 
ficence and  practicality  are  well  developed  you  have 
a  man  indeed,  a  man  whom  all  must  respect  and 
even  love.  Those  four  qualities  are  the  four  corner- 
stones of  an  imperial  character,  speaking  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  home  and  the  Sunday-school. 

Elsewhere  it  was  pointed  out  that  if  we  are  to 
remedy  the  moral  conditions  prevailing,  we  must 
distinguish  sharply  between  the  boy's  soul  and  his 
intellect.  Intellect  surely  does  count  in  the  make-up 
of  an  imperial  character;  but  as  that  part  of  the 
business  is  being  admirably  attended  to  in  the  vari- 
ous orders  of  state  school  it  has  not  seemed  neces- 
sary to  speak  of  it  here  particularly — especially 
since  it  is  not  the  business  of  the  home  and  the 
Sunday-school  to  do  that  work.  It  has  been  dele- 
gated to  others.  Church  and  Sunday-school  may 
and  undoubtedly  do  aid  in  the  intellectual  develop- 
ment of  their  youthful  charges,  but  that  is  not  their 
purpose  in  life.  They  exist  to  help  the  homes  in 
the  making  of  men  and  women,  leading  them  to 
Christ,  the  Savior  of  men,  and  then  helping  to  fash- 
ion their  characters  into  His  image. 

"Intellect  like  ice,  is  colorless,  no  one  has  more  of 
it  than  the  Devil,"  said  Dr.  Cunningham  Geikie 
once,  and  there  is  profound  meaning  in  the  remark. 
Development  of  a  boy's  intellect  doesn't  necessarily 


162  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

mean  development  of  good  character.  A  man  might 
have  a  brilHant  intellect  cultivated  to  the  nth  de- 
gree and  yet  be  sadly  lacking  in  every  one  of  the 
four  cardinal  qualities  mentioned  above.     We  must 
recognize  that  at  any  rate  three  of  those  qualities 
belong  to  the  soul  of  your  boy,  that  is  to  the  boy 
himself,  as  distinguished  from  that  functioning  of 
his  soul  which  we  call  intellect,  the  boy  observing, 
memorizing,  discriminating,  etc.,  etc. ;  and  the  care  of 
the  boy's  soul,  that  is  himself,  God  Almighty  en- 
trusts primarily  to  teachers  who  hold  their  certifi- 
cates   not     from    any    college    or    state    board    of 
education,  but  directly  from  heaven.     That  responsi- 
bility cannot  be  delegated  to  others,  howsoever  the 
shift   may  be   attempted.     Incidentally   the   public 
school  may  help,  but  the  help  at  present  is  only 
incidental  for  it  takes  that  institution  about  all  its 
time  to  load  your  boy   up   with  certain  necessary 
information,  and  to  sharpen  his  wits  in  order  that 
he  may  live  and  make  his  way  creditably  in  his  day 
and  generation.  The  Church  and  the  Sunday-school 
may  help  at  the  task  and   are  anxious  to  do  so. 
That  is  what  they  are  there  for.     In  fact  it  is  their 
main  business  to  help ;  but  to  help  to  do  a  thing 
is  not  to  do  it,  it  is  only  to  help ;  and  so  the  burden 
of    the   development   of   the    four   chief   pillars   of 
character  in   your  boy's  soul  falls  back  on  those 
whom  God  has  ordained  and  commissioned  to  the 
task — a  task  which  none  other  may  so  well  do. 

Let  us  now  consider  at  close  range  the  I.  G.  G.  C. 
in  its  practical  working  and  its  educational  bear- 
ing on  the  problem  before  us,  that  of  turning  out  a 
man  who  shall  be  as 

"A  tower  of  strength 
That  stands  four  square  to  every  wind  that  blows." 


WHZ     THEY     F'AIL  163 

The  Industrial  Guild  of  the  Great  Commission 
has  two  functions  and  two  classes  of  members.  Its 
functions  are  financial  and  educational  and  its  mem- 
bers are  seniors  and  juniors.  The  juniors  range  in 
age  from  five  to  sixteen ;  the  seniors  may  be  any- 
where from  sixteen  to  one  hundred  and  sixteen.  The 
membership  is  broken  up  into  small  group  units 
of  production  that  we  call  firms.  One  or  more  may 
constitute  a  firm.  If  they  are  under  sixteen  we  like 
to  see  two,  three,  four  or  even  in  exceptional  cases 
five,  in  a  firm.  Where  they  are  under  sixteen  we 
like  to  see  some  adult  hooked  up  with  them,  and 
if  not,  there  must  be  some  older  one  who  will  have 
a  kindly  supervision  of  what  the  firm  is  doing. 
Judgment  is  exercised  in  the  organization  of  these 
partnerships  to  let  them  be  insofar  as  possible,  con- 
genial groups  and  competent.  Care  is  taken  on  the 
one  hand  to  see  that  the  group  is  not  so  small  as  to 
make  the  work  it  undertakes  a  burden,  and  on  the 
other  to  see  that  the  group  is  not  so  large  that  the 
members  feel  no  sense  of  individual  responsibility 
and  are  falling  over  one  another.  The  firms,  like 
the  big  firms  downtown,  go  under  firm  names,  such 
as  "James  Cook  &  Co.";  "Brown  &  Brown";  "Hess 
&  Son" ;  "The  Red  Deer  Trading  Co." ;  "Summer- 
land  Supply  Co.";  and  so  on.  From  the  merchants' 
signs  in  the  village  or  town  the  children  soon  catch 
the  idea.  Maybe  in  the  talk  that  goes  with  the 
search  for  a  satisfactory  firm  name  they  get  a  grain 
of  commercial  education  and  their  first  introduction 
to  the  business  world.  As  the  youngsters  are  am- 
bitious to  be  and  do  like  grown-up  folk  they  absorb 
the  information  greedily. 

Each  firm  has  a  goal  of  endeavor  for  the  year; 
it  sets  out  to  make  a  sum  equal  to  one  cent  a  day 
for  every  working  day  of  the  year,  that  is  $3.12. 
If  the  members  of  a  firm  are  over  sixteen,  that  is 


164  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

the  goal  for  each  member  of  the  firm,  but  where 
juniors  are  concerned  the  burden  would  generally 
be  too  much  for  one,  and  hence  the  requirement 
of  two  or  more,  and  preferably  three  or  four,  to 
raise  that  amount.  The  reason  for  this  is  that  our 
work  is  primarily  and  fundamentally  educational 
so  far  as  they  are  concerned,  and  we  are  dealing 
with  a  very  powerful  instrument  of  education,  viz., 
reflex  action.  "Action  and  reaction  are  equal  and 
opposite,"  and  it  would  therefore  be  very  bad  busi- 
ness to  overwork  the  boy.  If  little  Billy  lifts  so 
hard  to-day  that  he  bursts  his  suspenders  the 
chances  are  he  won't  lift  at  all  to-morrow.  Action 
and  reaction  will  be  equal  and  opposite.  Therefore 
we  seek  to  give  him  just  such  a  task  as  he  will  be 
able  to  accomplish  comfortably  and  yet  feel  that  he 
has  accomplished  something  worth  while.  It  is  not 
what  he  makes  that  matters  but  how  he  makes  it 
and  why  he  makes  it,  and  what  he  thinks  and  feels 
about  it  while  he  is  making  it. 

There  is  another  reason  for  introducing  the  co- 
operative idea ;  it  not  only  strengthens  the  firm 
from  a  commercial  standpoint,  since  the  threefold 
cord  is  not  quickly  broken,  but  it  gives  play  to  the 
social  instincts  which  need  developing  on  that 
plane.  Boys,  like  all  good  birds,  are  gregarious. 
Buzzards  may  go  alone  but  boys  wont.  They  crave 
companionship.  This  they  usually  get  so  far  as 
their  play  and  their  studies  are  concerned,  but  so 
far  as  their  commercial  instincts  are  concerned 
there  has  been  little  opportunity  to  travel  together. 
Yet  the  day  comes  when  it  will  be  on  that  plane 
almost  wholly  he  will  be  rubbing  shoulders  with 
his  fellows.  The  play  will  have  dwindled  to  an 
occasional  hour  in  the  evening  or  of  a  Saturday  after- 
noon ;  the  books  will  have  become  only  an  indistinct 
dream,  and  a  bad  one  at  that  it  may  be,  and  the 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  165 

man's  days  and  nights  will  be  given  up  to  scheming 
ways  of  overreaching  his  competitors. 

We  all  recognize  the  value  of  team-play  in  a  boy's 
life  and  can  readily  see  how  it  rubs  the  corners  ofif 
him.  To  have  the  other  fellow's  elbows  in  his  ribs — 
especially  if,  as  generally  is  the  case,  the  other 
fellow  be  a  bigger  boy;  and  to  be  "called  down" 
in  the  remorseless,  inconsiderate,  and  highly  un- 
parliamentary language  which  characterizes  the  vo- 
cabulary of  youth  in  its  more  savage  moments,  is  a 
social  education  which  is  just  as  valuable  as  any 
other  he  gets  from  the  teachers  his  father  so  cheer- 
fully supports.  It  is  not  of  the  north  wind  that 
at  a  certain  age  boys  begin  to  develop  the  gang 
spirit.  It  is  nature's  way  of  preparing  them  for  the 
citizenship  of  the  future.  Were  we  all  living  in  a 
state  of  nature  we  might  let  it  go  at  that,  but  in- 
asmuch as  we  are  not  and  never  shall  be,  in  all 
probability,  but  are  destined  to  a  future  of  marvel- 
ous commercial  adjustments  and  interplay  of  com- 
mercial feelings,  would  it  not  be  well  for  us  to 
provide  some  kind  of  small  theater  on  which  those 
instincts  might  become  operative  under  a  just, 
liberal  and  kindly  management?  The  boy  who  is 
all  the  time  "swapping"  jack-knives  will  get  along 
well  anyhow  in  this  commercial  age,  if  by  the  term 
"well"  we  mean  simply  the  piling  up  around  him  of 
this  world's  goods ;  but  there  are  only  a  few  such 
born  traders  in  every  school-room;  the  majority 
have  to  be  made  later  on. 

"Woe  unto  him  that  is  alone  when  he  falleth," 
and  "How  can  one  be  v\^arm  alone?"  So  we  intro- 
duce the  co-operative  principle,  introduce  the  gang 
spirit,  turn  work  into  play,  strengthen  our  combina- 
tion and  prepare  our  bo)^s  by  the  requirement  of 
justice,  foresight,  and  attention  to  a  business  that 
is  real  and  their  very  own  if  small,  better  to  under- 


166  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

stand  and  better  to  carry  themselves  in  the  larger 
but  not  essentially  different  affairs  of  to-morrow 
into  which  most  of  them  will  certainly  be  plunged. 
We  say  not  essentially  different,  but  possibly  that 
requires  a  word  of  qualification.  It  may  be  that 
to-morrow  we  shall  see  a  new  kind  of  commercial 
co-operation — one  based  on  justice  and  kindness, 
not  on  wolfish  repacity — such  as  Kipling  describes 
when  he  says : 

"Now  this  is  the  law  of  the  jungle  as  old  and  as 

true  as  the  sky ; 
And  the  wolf  that  shall  keep  it  may  prosper,  but 

the  wolf  that  shall  break  it  must  die, 
As  the  creeper  that  girdles  the  tree  trunk,  the  law 

runneth  forward  and  back; 
For   the  strength   of   the   pack   is   the  zvolf,  and  the 

strength  of  the  wolf  is  the  pack. 
Now  these  are  the  laws  of  the  jungle,  and  many 

and  mighty  are  they; 
But  the  head  and  the  hoof  of  the  law  and  the  haunch 

and  the  hump  is  'Obey!'  " 

There  are  not  wanting  signs  in  the  sky  that  a 
change  is  at  hand,  and  our  boys  may  yet  see  the 
industrial  group  selfishness  which  is  built  on  the 
ruins  of  the  old  individualistic,  competitive  selfish- 
ness, give  place  to  co-operative-group  industrial  ac- 
tion which  will  be  based  on  the  divine  right  of 
every  man  and  every  woman  to  "life,  liberty  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness." 

As  the  firms  in  the  Industrial  Guild  are  real  firms, 
they  go  into  real  business  for  the  express  purpose  of 
making  that  cent  a  day  to  help  carry  out  the  last 
wish  and  command  of  our  Lord,  Jesus  Christ.  In 
order  that  there  may  be  no  danger  of  interfering 
with  the  revenues  of  other  missionary  organizations 
it  is  very  clearly  understood   that  what   they   do  in 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  167 

the  ^iiild  is  not  to  be  made  a  substitute  for  any 
other  giving.  It  is  impressed  upon  them  that  this  is 
an  "extra  mile  of  service"  for  the  Master  as  a  per- 
sonal love  token  to  Him,  or  as  an  effort  to  help 
those  whom  He  would  help.  In  fact  the  enroll- 
ment card  reads  as  follows: 

"I  promise  to  endeavor  to  make  one  cent  a  day 
EXTRA  this  year  toward  carrying  out  the  Great 
Commission  of  Jesus  Christ.  By  extra,  I  under- 
stand new  money  made  for  that  express  purpose, 
and  I  further  understand  that  it  is  not  to  be  a  sub- 
stitute for,  or  to  stand  in  the  way  of  any  other  giving." 

The  reasons  for  this  are  economic,  politic  and 
educational.  We  take  no  gifts  save  time  from  any- 
body. Gifts  of  money  are  always  refused.  We 
say,  "Give  them  to  the  others;  that's  their  line." 
As  for  ourselves  we  say,  "We  want  money;  let 
us  go  out  and  make  it.  They  are  making  money  all 
around  us  for  everything  else ;  let  us  make  sortie  for 
this.  We  can  do  it  in  our  spare  time,  and  if  ex- 
penses be  a  first  charge  against  the  product  then 
we  shall  be  nothing  out  of  pocket — nothing  except 
a  little  spare  time,  which  would  have  been  lost  any- 
how." If  a  man  says,  "I  am  doing  all  I  can  now," 
we  say,  "then  the  guild  is  no  place  for  you  ;  it  is  only 
for  some  of  the  rest  of  us  who  haven't  been  doing 
as  much  as  we  might  and  are  going  to  take  another 
turn  at  it  this  year." 

But  it  is  chiefly  because  our  work  is  educational 
that  we  insist  most  strenuously  on  this  method  of 
procedure.  That  will  be  more  apparent  in  a  mo- 
ment or  two  as  the  application  in  concrete  cases 
comes  into  view.  The  firms  go  into  all  kinds  of 
business,  but  in  every  instance  before  a  cent  is 
given  to  missions  the  expenses  of  operation  must 
be  taken  out  and  paid  back  to  whoever  put  up  the 
money.    In  some  lines  of  business  the  time  element 


168  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

is  very  large  and  raw  material  costs  little  or  noth- 
ing; in  others  the  raw  material  costs  quite  a  little 
while  the  time  is  not  so  prominent.  Activities  are  very 
varied  in  adult  membership,  and  the  money  is  made 
in  a  score  of  different  ways;  gifts,  aptitudes,  train- 
ing and  opportunity  determining  the  route  taken 
as  in  ordinary  every-day  life.  Here  is  a  music 
teacher  who  looks  up  an  extra  pupil  for  a  quarter's 
lessons  and  so  makes  her  money ;  here  is  a  book- 
keeper who  keeps  an  extra  set  of  books  on  purpose 
to  help  extend  the  Kingdom  of  God ;  here  is  another 
doing  some  tutoring  at  so  much  per  toot ;  and  so 
on  with  painting,  sewing,  singing,  typewriting,  bak- 
ing, scrubbing,  knitting,  darning  socks  for  bachelor 
friends  or  even  playing  the  angel  of  mercy  and  clean- 
ing up  their  shacks  occasionally.  Carpenters  look 
up  an  extra  job  fixing  fences  or  making  hen  coops 
or  bookcases ;  and  so  on  with  plumbers,  painters, 
printers  and  other  craftsmen  and  laborers.  One  man 
writes  that  he  made  his  extra  contribution  by 
"digging  a  grave  on  Sunday."  Others  of  a  more 
sporty  turn  take  to  the  woods  with  gun  or  rod  and 
sell  the  product,  but  the  simplest,  and,  so  far  as 
our  juniors  are  concerned,  the  most  general  and 
possibly  the  most  ideal  lines  of  business,  are  those 
afforded  by  agriculture  and  horticulture,  though 
poultry,  stock  raising,  hog  raising  and  such  kindred 
pursuits  as  the  breeding  of  canaries,  pigeons,  etc., 
for  market,  are  almost  equally  good.  Other  things 
being  equal,  or  even  tolerable,  the  most  valuable 
lines  of  activity  for  boys  and  girls  are  those  which 
not  only  call  them  out  of  doors  but  which  make  the 
strongest  appeal  to  the  altruistic  in  their  natures, 
and  which  afford  the  greatest  number  of  reflexes. 
For  this  reason  whatever  may  be  said  of  adults  it 
would  be  a  mistake  so  far  as  a  boy  is  concerned 
to  put  a  premium  on  hunting  and  trapping  rather 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  169 

than  on  the  other  quieter  pursuits  named;  for  while 
the  hunting  may  not  be  unprofitable,  and  while  it 
certainly  is  good  for  his  health,  and  educative  of 
some  of  his  faculties,  such  as  observation  and  prac- 
tical judgment,  it  may  have  a  tendency  to  empha- 
size the  destructive  and  the  heartless,  which  quali- 
ties in  many  boys  are  already  so  strong  as  to  need 
no  encouragement. 

A  few  illustrations  drawn  from  life  now  will 
serve  to  set  forth  in  clear  relief  our  I.  G.  G.  C. 
education  in  the  school  of  things  as  they  are.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  the  problem  before  us  is 
that  of  turning  out  a  man  who  is  ethically  fit,  i.  e., 
one  who  not  only  knows  the  good  but  finds  him- 
self both  able  and  willing  to  do  it.  That  is  a 
consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished  for,  and  the 
first  step  toward  the  goal  will  be  to  do  just  as  we 
have  been  trying  to  do — hold  up  the  ideal  before 
him.  Only,  as  our  Sunday-school  teachers  are  tell- 
ing us,  let  us  have  more  of  it.  There  is  no  substitu- 
tion for  that.  It  is  God's  first  principle  of  education 
and  it  is  absolutely  indispensable.  In  the  second 
place,  let  us  get  the  boy  to  do  the  good  we  would 
have  him  do  in  manhood,  and  as  he  does  it,  silently, 
unconsciously,  he  will  gain  not  only  the  power 
to  do  it  but  also  the  disposition  to  do  it.  And  this 
is  the  way  it  works.  Let  us  take  those  four  cardinal 
qualities  of  an  imperial  character,  manliness,  hon- 
esty, beneficence  and  practicality — seriatim,  and 
use  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  intelligently  as  one  means  of 
applying  the  reflex  principle  to  the  building  up  of 
those  ethical  action  and  association  neurones  in 
the  boy's  brain,  without  which  he  must  go  through 
life  ethically  halting — one  of  those  "who  with  full 
command  of  theory  never  get  to  holding  their  limp 
characters  erect,"  never  get  beyond  the  stage  of 
"empty  gesture-making." 


170  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

MANLINESS 

The  problem  then  is  to  make  a  manly  man.  Well, 
in  the  first  place  preach  it,  everybody,  all  the  time, 
just  as  usual.  Secondly  get  your  boy  to  do  the 
manly  deed.  And  that  is  precisely  what  we  seek 
to  do  in  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  We  say  "Now  boys  we  are  not 
going  around  this  time  with  our  hats  in  our  hands 
to  ask  money  for  the  collection  from  anybody.  We 
will  stand  on  our  feet  and  do  business  like  men." 
And  so  we  do,  and  this  is  how  it  works  out : 

Here  are  three  boys  let  us  say,  of  fourteen,  twelve 
and  ten  in  one  home.  They  are  on  the  Guild  books 
the  firm  of  James  Cook  &  Co.  James  Cook  &  Co. 
are  going  into  the  potato  business,  as  a  discussion 
of  the  local  trade  conditions,  climate,  soil,  adapta- 
bility, etc.,  indicates  that  that  would  be  more  likely 
to  be  a  profitable  line  than  beans,  onions,  straw- 
berries or  anything  else.  The  firm  decides  to  plant 
a  bushel  of  potatoes,  nurse  them  along  through  the 
Summer,  dig  them  and  sell  them  in  the  Fall,  and, 
after  deducting  all  expenses,  give  the  proceeds  as  a 
special  contribution  toward  sending  someone  out 
to  the  less-favored  places  of  the  earth  with  the  tid- 
ings of  salvation.  Should  the  proceeds,  after  pay- 
ing all  expenses,  amount  to  more  than  ^^.12,  then 
the  balance  belongs  to  the  firm  to  do  with  as  it 
pleases.  But  care  should  be  taken  that  that  balance 
be  not  excessive  lest  the  egoistic  come  to  supplant 
the  altruistic  and  the  latter  become  even  irksome. 
This  has  happened  in  actual  experience.  So  little 
does  greed  need  cultivation. 

Well,  the  firm  has  been  organized,  the  firm  style 
has  been  adopted,  the  planting-time  has  come  and 
the  firm  proceeds  to  business.  But  they  no  sooner 
proceed  to  business  than  they  learn,  as  their  father 
learned  a  long  time  before  they  made  his  acquaint- 
ance, that  business  won't  do  itself.     Unfortunately 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  171 

there  are  difficulties  in  the  way.  They  have  no  seed. 
Where  shall  they  get  it?  Get  it?  Why  get  it  from 
father  of  course,  whv..  they  have  been  getting 
things  all  their  lives.  So  off  to  their  father  they  go. 
But  there  they  run  against  a  snag.  The  old  gentle- 
man, who  is  our  coadjutor  in  this  work  and  recog- 
nizes that  the  cost  of  the  potatoes  is  neither  here 
nor  there  in  this  process  of  education,  but  that  how 
they  are  obtained  is  very  important,  says  very 
suavely: 

"Well,  now  boys,  that  is  fine.  I  am  in  hearty 
sympathy  with  the  purpose  your  firm  has  in  view, 
and  I  would  gladly  give  you  the  potatoes  for  such 
a  noble  cause,  but  unfortunately  I  cannot,  because, 
you  see,  that  institution  doesn't  take  any  gifts  ex- 
cept time  from  anybody.  Now  what  are  you  going 
to  do  about  that?"' 

Then  there  ensues  a  palaver  with  their  "guide, 
philosopher  and  friend,"  the  upshot  of  which  is  they 
get  the  potatoes  on  time  with  the  understanding 
that  they  pay  for  them  in  the  Fall;  so  the  firm 
hands  over  its  note  for  the  fifty  cents  or  whatever 
it  may  be,  with  interest  at  six  per  cent,  pater  meas- 
ures out  a  scripture  measure  bushel  to  them  (ex- 
ample being  better  than  precept,  especially  where 
we  are  the  beneficiaries)  and  the  boys  start  ofif  with 
a  war-whoop  for  the  garden  back  of  the  house 
in  which  potatoes  have  been  raised  from  time  imme- 
morial, and  maybe  from  the  time  of  Adam  down, 
for  all  they  know  to  the  contrary. 

So  far  the  affair  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  business 
transaction,  for  character  is  capital,  dear  reader, 
down  at  the  bank.  A  clean  man  can  get  an  ac- 
commodation when  a  crooked  man  can't,  and  their 
clean  young  lives  are  good  for  the  necessary  capital 
till  their  crop  comes  in  in  the  Fall.  But  on  the  way 
to  the  potato  patch,  a  road  that  it  has  taken  an 


172  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

hour  and  a  half  to  cover,  for  perfectly  valid  reasons 
known  only  to  boys,  they  run  into  their  paternal 
ancestor  once  more,  and  he  enquires  where  they 
are  going  to  plant  their  potatoes. 

"In  the  potato  patch,  o'  course."  "Well,  boys, 
does  your  firm  own  that  land  on  which  you  propose 
to  plant  them?"  Well,  no,  they  can't  just  say  that 
their  firm  exactly  owns  the  land,  no,  but — "Well, 
now  boys,  you  know  the  Industrial  Guild  is  a  busi- 
ness institution  which  accepts  no  gifts  except  time, 
and  I'm  afraid,  therefore,  I  cannot  give  you  the 
land,  much  as  I  should  like  to  do  so,  were  the  case 
otherwise.  Now  what  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?" 

So  another  palaver  ensues  as  a  result  of  which 
the  boys  agree  to  rent  the  land,  at  such  a  figure, 
be  it  said  entre  nous,  as  will  be  reasonable  from  the 
standpoint  of  their  limited  financial  vision  and  re- 
sources, however  nominal  it  might  appear  to  a  rep- 
resentative of  Bradstreet's  or  Dun  Wiman  &  Co. 
This  point  is  important  though  apparently  trivial. 
To  rent  the  land  at  a  price  which  they  feel  is  purely 
nominal  is  to  subvert  the  very  end  we  have  in 
view  by  putting  a  premium  on  trickery  in  helping 
them  to  evade  the  conditions  under  which,  in  join- 
ing the  I,  G.  G.  C.,  they  have  agreed  to  work. 
We  must  remember  it  is  not  what  we  think  but 
what  they  think  that  counts,  and  doing  is  vastly 
more  significant  than  either  hearing  or  seeing  when 
it  comes  to  character  building. 

By  this  time  the  potatoes  have  been  honorably 
acquired  and  the  rent  obligation  has  been  duly  as- 
sumed. Now  they  are  sure  that  they  are  out  of  the 
woods,  so  they  sit  down  on  the  bag  to  rest  once 
more  and  talk  matters  over.  Then  they  suddenly 
remember  that  hoes  are  necessary  and  set  off  in  a 
race  to  the  granary  to  .,^.t  them.  Armed  with  these 
weapons  they  are  marching  back  to  the  field  when 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  173 

once  more  they  run  into  their  fi^ther.  He  wants  to 
know  who  owns  those  hoes.  This  time  it  doesn't 
take  long  to  explain  just  why  he  asks  or  what  is 
wanted.  The  boys  are  learning  fast  in  that  dearest, 
hardest  and  best  of  all  the  schools  in  which  we 
acquire  information,  and  they  tell  him  they  will 
settle  for  that  too,  when  their  crop  comes  in  in  the 
Fall. 

And  so  at  every  turn  they  are  obliged  to  stand  on 
their  own  feet  and  do  business  like  men ;  and  when 
in  the  Fall  those  boys  come  in  with  their  three  or 
four  or  five  dollars  that  they  have  won  by  the  grace 
of  their  own  right  arms,  you  will  see,  if  you  observe 
them  very  closely,  that  their  heads  are  up  a  little 
higher  in  the  air,  their  feet  are  planted  a  little  more 
firmly  on  the  floor,  and  their  little  bosoms  are  heav- 
ing and  glowing  with  a  new  emotion.  They  feel 
like  men.  And  why  do  they  feel  like  men?  Be- 
cause they  have  done  like  men.  Every  act  we  ever 
do,  be  it  good  or  bad  or  indififerent,  is  attended  by 
its  own  characteristic  reflex  which  builds  by  so 
much  the  cells  in  the  brain  that  give  power  to  do 
that  particular  act  next  time  a  little  more  easily, 
a  little  more  readily  and  a  little  more  pleasurably. 
When  a  man  does  a  mean  act  he  feels  mean  inside; 
when  he  does  a  generous  act  he  feels  "good"  inside ; 
when  he  does  a  manly  act  he  feels  himself  rightly 
more  of  a  man,  and  when  he  acts  like  a  hound  he 
feels  like  one  and  tends  to  skulk  out  of  the  way 
of  his  fellows. 

Thus  if  you  keep  your  boy  not  only  hearing  about 
standing  on  his  own  feet,  but  actually  doing  it 
through  the  ten  most  important  formative  years  of 
his  life,  you  will  turn  out  a  manly  man  as  inevitably 
as  you  turn  out  a  carpenter  by  ten  years  of  shoving 
the  saw  and  plane,  and  for  precisely  the  same  rea- 
son, viz.,  that  action  and  association  neurones  of 


174  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

whatever  kind  are  built,  and  can  be  built,  only  by 
the  reflexes  of  our  own  activity.  There  is  no  mys- 
tery in  it  when  one  thinks  about  it. 

HONESTY 

Again,  take  that  second  corner-stone  of  an  im- 
perial character,  honesty.  "An  honest  man  is  the 
noblest  work  of  God,"  but  apparently  a  fire-proof 
honesty  is  all  too  hard  to  find.  Were  it  otherwise 
we  should  be  willing  to  trust  our  ten  thousand  dol- 
lars with  a  greater  number  of  people  in  the  dark. 
Why  do  we  have  locks  on  our  doors,  watchmen  in 
our  warehouses,  and  policemen  on  every  other  cor- 
ner if  people  can  be  universally  trusted?  The  fact 
is  a  great  deal  of  our  honesty  is  of  that  negative 
type  which  merely  lacks  a  perfectly  safe  oppor- 
tunit5^  How  many  people  are  restrained  from  petty 
dishonesty  by  fear  of  detection,  law,  public  opinion, 
reputation  generally,  who  can  tell?  Of  course  there 
are  those  who  would  not  forget  to  make  good  the 
nickel  fare  the  street  railway  conductor  overlooked, 
however  they  might  suspect  the  company  had  un- 
righteously annexed  one  or  more  of  their  dollars  by 
those  indirect  methods  best  known  to  corporations 
and  their  lawyers.  But  that  is  not  the  point ;  the 
point  is  that  there  is  not  a  sufficient  number  of  them 
and  that  you  want  to  make  sure  that  boy  of  yours 
will  be  of  their  sort. 

How  shall  that  be  accomplished?  The  answer 
is  by  getting  your  boy  to  actually  do  the  scrupu- 
lously honest  thing  through  ten  or  more  formative 
years  of  his  life.  If  you  can  do  that  Nature  will 
take  care  of  the  rest.  God  always  does  his  part 
when  we  do  ours.  Now,  in  his  Industrial  Guild 
operations  your  boy  suddenly  finds  himself  in  a 
world  that  is  vastly  different  from  that  of  his  Sun- 
day-school.   The  temptation  to  put  in  doubtful  po- 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  175 

tatoes  to  fill  up  that  bag,  putting  them  well  down 
out  of  sight  of  course,  (since  they  wouldn't  look 
well  on  top)  comes  to  him  with  something  of  the 
compelling  force  of  an  electric  shock.  The  fierce, 
unholy  impulses  which  are  native  to  the  human 
soul,  rise  up  with  all  the  suddenness  and  fury 
of  a  Euroclydon  tempest,  and  all  the  good  things  he 
has  heard  at  his  mother's  knee  and  from  his  Bible- 
school  teacher,  and  other  good  people,  seem  far 
off  and  unreal. 

Brother,  were  you  ever  there?  If  you  have  not 
been,  don't  talk.  You  have  no  idea  how  subtle  and 
how  strong  is  the  tug  toward  gaining  an  advantage 
by  departing  just  a  little  from  the  straight  path 
of  rectitude.  It  is  not  that  he  does  not  know  he 
would  be  doing  wrong  to  scamp  the  measure,  or 
to  put  those  doubtful  potatoes  in.  He  does  know, 
for,  thank  the  Lord,  he  has  been  to  Sunday-school 
and  there  he  learned  the  right ;  the  trouble  comes  at 
the  point  of  translating  the  good  teaching  into  the 
correlative  good  action. 

But  it  is  precisely  into  that  stern  school  of  choice 
and  action  we  must  plunge  the  boy  thus  prema- 
turely that  while  his  brain  is  forming  it  may  be 
formed  aright,  and  it  is  here  he  needs  the  kindly 
oversight  of  which  we  spoke.  For  the  principle  of 
which  we  speak  and  with  which  we  deal,  will  work 
just  as  powerfully  and  readily  to  ruin  your  boy  as 
it  will  to  make  him.  Those  ten  years  of  crooked 
dealing  will  turn  out  a  crook  just  as  surely  as  the 
ten  years  of  scrupulously  just  dealing  will  turn 
out  an  honest  man.  Therefore,  since  we  are  deal- 
ing with  edged  tools,  we  require  that  some  adult 
shall  keep  an  eye  on  the  doings  of  that  firm  of 
juniors.  It  is  here  the  boy  meets  his  Waterloo. 
Whether  he  shall  stand  or  fall  is  very  apt  to  depend 
on  whether  Blucher  comes  toward  the  close  of  the 


176  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

day  or  not.  It  must  be  our  business  to  see  that  he 
does.  In  the  first  experiment  of  this  kind  the 
writer  made,  Blucher  came  in  this  way  at  marketing 
time. 

"Now  boys,  whatever  you  do  be  careful  about 
those  potatoes.  Remember  that  we  are  doing  busi- 
ness for  Jesus  Christ,  and  he  hates  anything  that 
is  crooked,  or  shady  or  mean.  Whatever  you  do 
don't  put  a  bad  potato  into  His  barrel.  He  would 
rather  you  would  throw  away  two  good  potatoes ;  yes, 
rather  you  threw  away  the  whole  lot  than  that  you 
should  compromise  him  by  putting  one  bad  one  into 
His  barrel. 

And  they  didn't.  The  purchasers  afterward  ex- 
pressed their  pleasure  at  receiving  such  good  stock 
and  were  open  to  do  business  with  those  firms  the 
next  year. 

Here  is  another  illustration  of  the  modus  operandi 
from  the  fertile  province  of  Saskatchewan.  A 
mother  lets  her  little  girl  go  into  the  hen  business 
with  a  partner.  They  buy  a  couple  of  hens  say  at 
fifty  cents  each,  let  them  lay  their  own  eggs,  set 
them  on  their  eggs  when  they  have  laid  them,  take 
ofif  the  heads  of  the  whole  lot  in  the  Fall,  get  back 
the  price  of  the  hens  and  whatever  it  cost  to  feed 
them,  and  the  rest,  up  to  the  one  cent  a  day  limit, 
goes  to  missions.  It  so  happens  that  the  little  girl's 
hen,  much  to  her  chagrin,  hatches  out  only  seven 
chickens  while  her  mother's  hatch  ten.  Immedi- 
ately she  begins  to  cast  covetous  eyes  on  those 
ten  chickens,  being  naturally  ambitious  to  come  out 
a  winner  and  to  make  a  big  showing.  Then  she 
worries  her  mother  till  the  mother,  loving  not 
wisely  but  too  well,  trades  her  ten  for  the  child's 
seven. 

Now    the    pater   familias    allows   this  little  drama 
of  life  to  work  itself  out  and  then  he  makes  it  his 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  177 

business,  in  a  quiet  evening  hour,  to  have  a  Httle 
chat  with  Mary  about  her  firm's  business,  and  she  tells 
him  all  about  it.  Then  he  goes  over  the  ground 
again  with  her  somewhat  after  this  fashion: 

"Now  Mary  let's  understand  this  transaction. 
Your  firm  bought  a  hen  from  your  mother  for  fifty 
cents."  "Yes."  "And  your  hen  hatched  out  only 
seven  chickens  while  your  mother's  hatched  ten." 
"Yes."  "And  then  you  traded  your  seven  for  her 
ten."  "Yes."  "Well,  were  your  chickens  any  bet- 
ter than  your  mother's — thoroughbreds,  for  in- 
stance?" "Oh,  no.  They  were  all  the  same."  "Then 
you  got  three  chickens  for  nothing  in  that  deal, 
didn't  you.  Alary?"  "Well,  yes,  guess  I  did."  And 
Mary  rather  thinks  it  was  smart  to  have  over- 
reached her  mother  by  so  much. 

"Well  now  Mary,  look  here.  As  I  understand 
things  your  firm  in  the  Industrial  Guild  is  doing 
business  for  Jesus  Christ;  and  you  know  he  doesn't 
like  it  if  we  don't  do  what  is  right,  and  I'm  afraid 
in  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  they  couldn't  take  those  three 
chickens  because  you  see  your  firm  didn't  pay  for 
them,  and  in  the  Industrial  Guild  you  know  they  do 
business  and  don't  take  any  gifts  except  time.  They 
can  take  the  seven  chickens  but  not  the  three. 

"And  Mary,  your  firm  in  buying  made  a  bargain 
■with  your  mother  for  so  much,  didn't  you?"  "Yes," 
"Well,  Mary,  a  bargain  is  a  bargain,  isn't  it?  You 
know  God's  idea  of  an  honest  man  is  a  man  who 
swears  to  his  own  hurt  and  changes  not;  that  is, 
one  who  makes  a  bad  bargain  and  sticks  to  it  be- 
cause his  word  is  passed,  because  his  word  is  him- 
self, and  if  his  word  is  no  good,  he's  no  good,  is  he? 
I  guess,  Mary,  you  had  better  stick  to  your  bar- 
gain, hadn't  you?" 

You  give  Mary  ten  years  of  that  kind  of  training 
jn  honesty,  not  hearing  about  it,  or  dreaming  about 


178  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

it,  but  actually  doing  it  to  the  division  of  a  hair  and 
the  fraction  of  a  cent,  and  depend  upon  it,  when 
she  comes  to  do  business  in  your  store  the  eleventh 
year  she  will  do  honest  business  as  easily  as  she 
writes  her  name,  and  for  exactly  the  same  reason — 
because  she  has  been  doing  it  for  ten  years  already. 
She  has  the  honesty  action  cells  and  the  honesty 
association  cells  so  well  developed  in  her  brain  that 
it  is  easy  for  her  to  do  the  right  and  doubly  hard 
for  her  to  do  the  wrong.  To  do  the  crooked  thing 
now  would  be  about  as  difficult  for  her  as  to  write 
with  her  left  hand. 

In  this  incident  we  see  again  the  imperative  need 
of  some  kind  of  gracious  oversight  of  the  way  in 
which  the  firm  is  doing  its  business.  The  reflex  of 
a  bad  act  makes  a  bad  boy  if  anything  more  quickly 
than  the  reflex  of  a  good  act  makes  a  good  one,  since 
we  seem  to  have  a  kind  of  natural  bias  toward  evil 
rather  than  good.  This  point  is  so  important  that 
the  I.  G.  G.  C.  generally  refuses  to  have  juniors  as 
members  unless  someone  of  mature  years  can  be 
found  who  will  be  sponsor  for  them. 

A  further  illustration  will  perhaps  show  more 
clearly  the  wisdom  of  this.  In  a  certain  town  in 
Manitoba  two  small  boys  decided  to  go  into  busi- 
ness in  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  for  the  good  of  the  world. 
Their  enterprise  was  quite  successful,  netting  them 
the  sum  of  five  dollars.  But  the  sun  of  prosperity 
brought  out  the  weeds  in  their  souls.  The  actual 
sight,  feel  and  possession  of  this  amount  of  real 
money  was  too  much  for  them  to  stand,  unaided  in 
the  crisis  by  any  stronger,  truer  hand,  and  so  they 
annexed  the  money  and  bought  a  dog  instead. 
Manifestly  it  does  not  require  any  occult  power  to 
see  that  that  way  over  the  hill  the  penitentiary  lies. 
Misappropriation  of  funds  people  would  call  it  in 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  179 

the   case   of   their   fathers,   would    they   not — with 
no  end  of  evil  reports  to  the  third  generation? 

How  much  better  for  those  two  boys  had  there 
been  some  wise  friend  or  elder  brother  to  help  them 
through  that  crisis,  to  help  them  achieve  the  right 
motor  discharge  instead  of  the  wrong  one  for  the 
ethical  ideas  and  impulses  they  had  duly  received 
in  home  and  in  Sunday-school !  After  a  few  ex- 
periences it  would  have  been  so  much  easier  to  do 
the  right  that  supervision  would  be  reduced  to 
a  minimum,  and  by  the  time  they  reached  man's 
estate  they  would  have  been  strongly  entrenched 
in  this  cardinal  virtue  of  simple,  common,  every-day, 
homely  old  honesty,  so  much  needed  by  the  world 
and  so  sorely  needed  by  the  Church.  Who  can 
tell  how  many  preachers,  Sunday-school  officers  and 
teachers,  and  other  Christian  workers,  have  seen 
their  work  all  undone  by  the  unrighteousness  con- 
cealed in  a  barrel  of  potatoes,  a  tub  of  butter,  a 
basket  of  eggs  or  a  bag  of  wheat  coming  from  some 
professedly  Christian  home?  And  it  is  not  because 
the  people  are  religious  hypocrites  either,  but  all 
because  they  have  never  had  this  kind  of  ethical 
training  which  alone  can  build  those  cells  in  the 
brain  that  give  us  the  power  to  do  what  we  know 
and  feel  we  ought  to  do.  As  M.  J.  Bahnsen,  the 
philosopher,  tells  us :  "The  actual  presence  of  the 
practical  opportunity  alone  furnishes  the  fulcrum 
upon  which  the  lever  can  rest  by  means  of  which 
the  moral  will  may  multiply  its  strength  and  raise 
itself  aloft.  He  who  has  no  solid  ground  to  press 
against  will  never  get  beyond  the  stage  of  empty 
gesture-making." 

BENEFICENCE 
The  third  corner-stone  of  an  imperial  character 
is  beneficence.   And   by  beneficence    is   not   meant 


180  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

benevolence.  There  is  a  world  of  difference  be- 
tween the  two  words.  Benevolence  means  to  wish 
well  or  the  good ;  beneficence  means  to  do  it.  The 
world  is  full  of  benevolent  people  who  wish  every- 
thing well ;  it  is  dying  for  lack  of  beneficent  people 
who  not  only  know  the  good  but  find  themselves 
able  to  do  it.  "If  wishes  were  horses  beggars  might 
ride,"  observes  Portia,  and  we  may  add  that  if 
wishes  were  dollars  our  Mission  Board  secretaries 
would  not  be  l)ing  awake  nights  trying  to  figure 
out  how  to  make  one  dollar  do  the  work  of  ten 
on  fields  at  home  and  abroad. 

The  shame  of  Christianity  is  her  failure  to  pro- 
vide. She  boasts  her  added  light  beside  which, 
as  she  tells  us,  the  light  of  former  days  was  but 
as  twilight  or  day  dawn,  and  yet  our  beneficence 
is  as  nothing  to  that  of  ancient  Israel.  Among  the 
Jews  before  Christ,  he  was  no  giver  who  gave  but 
a  tenth;  they  were  more  likely  to  give  a  fifth  or 
even  a  third.  The  heathen  of  southern  China  give 
one-fourth  to  their  gods.  But  among  Christian 
people  to-day  how  few  there  are  who  have  attained 
even  the  minimum  of  Judaism  in  that  regard ! 

In  1890  Mr.  Robert  E.  Speer  estimated  the  wealth 
of  the  Christian  portion  of  the  population  of  the 
United  States  at  twenty  billion  dollars  and  that 
perhaps  one-fiftieth  of  what  she  adds  to  her  wealth 
each  year  in  addition  to  that  now  given,  would  sup- 
port a  sufficient  number  of  missionaries  to  evangel- 
ize the  world.  How  much  greater  must  be  her 
wealth  to-day! 

Mr.  G.  T.  Manley  reckons  that  one  hundred 
thousand  workers  extra  would  be  the  very  outside 
number  required  to  evangelize  the  world  in  this 
generation,  and  that  if  one-fourth  of  the  Protestants 
of  Europe  and  America  gave  one  cent  a  day  it 
would  amount  to  one  hundred  million  dollars  a  year. 


IVHY     THEY     FAIL  181 

Dr.  Strong  in  "Our  Country"  says  there  is  money 
enough  in  the  hands  of  church  members  to  sow 
every  acre  of  the  earth  with  the  seed  of  truth  but 
it  is  being  misappHed.  "Indeed,  the  world  would 
have  been  evangelized  long  ago  if  Christians  had 
perceived  the  relation  of  money  to  the  Kingdom, 
and  had  accepted  their  stewardship." 

Were  the  Sunday  School  children  of  the  world  to 
put  up  but  two  cents  per  capita  per  week  for  mis- 
sions we  should  have  more  money  than  the  entire 
church  puts  up,  including  the  noble  work  of  The 
Laymen's  Movement.  The  fact  is  the  church  has 
largely  lost  the  power  to  give  normally.  There  is 
here  the  same  delinquency  as  is  evident  in  the  more 
patent  shortcomings  of  manliness  and  honesty,  and 
for  the  very  same  reason.  There  has  not  been  a 
proper  motor  discharge  ;  there  has  been  insufficiency 
of  eleemonsynary  activity.  Of  what  we  did  give  in 
our  youth  the  far  greater  part  cost  us  nothing  and 
therefore  achieved  nothing  of  beneficence  in  us.  In- 
deed, it  is  quite  possible  the  reflex  of  our  giving  was 
as  mischievous  as  helpful,  for  what  we  gained  in 
promotion  of  the  idea  of  giving  was  lost  in  the 
promotion  of  a  mendicant  spirit.  Personal  and  family 
pride  rather  than  missionary  interest  probably  ac- 
count for  a  large  fraction  of  the  receipts  on  Sunday. 

It  follows  that  if  the  church  is  ever  to  correct 
this  she  must  find  some  better  way  of  developing 
beneficence.  The  old  way  has  had  a  fair  trial  and 
it  has  manifestly  failed.  Let  us  now  try  a  new  plan. 
Let  us  add  something.  Let  us  induce  the  children 
to  bring  their  youthful  active  powers  to  bear  on 
the  Task.  Let  us  develop  in  their  brains  a  direct 
and  powerful  set  of  association  neurones  leading 
directly  from  the  benevolent  impulse  to  the  benefi- 
cent action  cells  developed  by  self-activity,  and  we 
shall  then  have  educationally  fitted  them  to  go  again 


182  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

with  profit  to  church  and  Sunday-school  and  Mis- 
sionary lecture.  The  new  benevolent  impulse  cre- 
ated will  then  find  a  natural,  healthful  and  pleasure- 
able  outlet  in  a  response  which  will  be  adequate  to 
the  stimulus,  instead  of  being,  as  it  is  with  us, 
strangled,  aborted,  drained  off  ineffectively,  to  leave 
behind  it  a  kind  of  feeling  of  demerit,  of  failure,  of 
shame  for  not  having  done  what  we  felt  somehow 
we  ought  to  have  done.  We  shall  then  have  the 
blessed  circle  of  a  complete  education — good  impres- 
sion— good  impulse — correlative  action — consequent 
enlargement  as  a  preparation  for  the  reception  and 
more  prompt  and  effective  execution  of  the  next 
good  impulse  that  comes  along. 

It  will  be  understood  of  course,  that  like  any 
other  education  which  has  to  do  with  the  building 
of  brain  cells  by  reflex  action,  the  business  can  not 
be  done  at  one  stroke.  The  public  school  teacher 
cannot  make  your  boy  a  mathematician  or  a  pen- 
man in  an  hour,  or  a  day,  or  a  week.  It  is  "the 
repeated  strokes  of  behavior"  which  alone,  under 
her  guidance  can  do  it.  So  also  we  cannot  expect 
the  boy  to  become  morally  fit  by  sporadic  attempts 
to  translate  good  impulses  into  their  correlative 
good  actions.  There  must  be  some  such  continuity 
of  training  as  we  see  in  the  day  school.  He  must 
be  inspired  to  keep  at  the  good  work.  Then  his 
moral  action  cells  have  a  chance  to  grow.  It  is  im- 
portant not  to  drop  the  knitting.  Thus  Bain  ob- 
serves: 

"The  peculiarity  of  the  moral  habits  as  contra- 
distinguished from  the  intellectual  acquisitions,  is 
the  presence  of  two  hostile  powers,  one  to  be  grad- 
ually raised  into  the  ascendant  over  the  other.  It  is 
necessary  above  all  things  in  such  a  situation  never 
to  lose  a  battle.  Every  gain  on  the  wrong  side  un- 
does the  effect  of  many  conquests  on  the  right.    The 


WHY     THEY     F'AIL  183 

essential  precaution,  therefore,  is  so  to  regulate  the 
two  opposing  powers  that  one  may  have  a  series  of 
uninterrupted  successes,  until  repetition  has  forti- 
fied it  to  such  a  degree  as  to  enable  it  to  cope  with 
the  opposition  under  any  circumstances.  This  is 
the  theoretically  best  career  of  mental  progress." 

Again,  if  we  are  to  produce  a  race  of  men  who 
will  adequately  appreciate  their  world  wide  rela- 
tions and  responsibilities,  we  must  give  the  boy  a 
world-wide  horizon.  Herbert  Spencer  points  out 
that  the  growth  of  civilization  depends  on  the 
widening  of  the  individual's  horizon.  The  savage 
whose  life  circles  about  a  very  limited  territory  and 
the  immediate  enjoyment  of  objects,  gradually 
evolves  into  the  half  civilized  man  who  thinks  of 
larger  territory,  larger  groups  of  individuals  and 
longer  periods  of  time.  Finally  we  have  the  fully 
civilized  man,  the  sweep  of  whose  political  vision  is 
a  hundred  3^ears  or  more,  and  who  builds  buildings 
that  endure  for  generations.  But  this,  he  points 
out,  is  an  achievement  conditioned  on  the  enlarge- 
ment of  his  mental  horizon  as  much  as  on  any  con- 
ditions outside  of  himself. 

A  very  serious  and  noble  effort  is  being  made 
along  this  line  by  the  present  missionary  educa- 
tional policy,  but  to  give  it  full  ethical  content  it 
must  be  more  directly  related  to  practical  activity 
on  the  part  of  the  young  or  it  will  go  the  way  of 
the  rest  of  our  teaching — only  a  small  proportion 
of  it  will  come  to  any  adequate  fruitage.  The  In- 
dustrial Guild  of  the  Great  Commission  is  designed 
to  help  at  just  this  point.    In  this  wise: 

Here  is  a  mother  who  has  a  five-year-old  son.  He 
is  her  partner  and  they  are  the  firm  of  Mary  Cook  & 
Son.  She  is  a  very  busy  woman  with  her  arms  full 
of  household  cares  like  other  women,  but  because 


184  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

she  loves  that  boy  she  finds  time  to  devote  a  few 
minutes  occasionally  to  the  development  of  the  high- 
est thing  about  him,  his  soul,  which  is,  indeed,  the 
boy  himself.  And  because  she  is  such  a  very  busy 
woman  she  buys  a  hen  and  sets  her  on  a  dozen  eggs, 
with  a  view  to  ultimate  profit  for  the  Kingdom,  as 
described  on  a  former  page.  Her  small  partner  is  in 
the  onion  business  and  has  a  bed  of  onions  which 
is  about  two  feet  square.  It  is  small  but  it  is  his 
own  and  more  important  to  him  than  his  father's 
whole  farm. 

During  the  Summer  evenings  that  mother  often 
holds  her  little  partner  on  her  lap  and  they  talk 
about  what  their  firm  is  doing  and  where  their 
money  is  going,  and  she  tells  him  about  the  black 
skinned  boys  and  girls  out  in  Africa  or  India,  who 
don't  know  who  made  them  and  are  saying  their 
prayers  to  snakes  and  toads.  And  maybe  she  tells 
him  of  the  great  party  which  Jesus  is  going  to  have 
in  His  beautiful  home  up  there,  and  how  he  has 
sent  out  an  invitation  to  all  the  boys  and  girls,  good 
and  bad,  to  come,  but  the  boys  and  girls  out  there 
haven't  yet  heard  about  it.  Then  they  talk  about 
how  the  invitation  is  to  be  got  to  them ;  who  will  go, 
how  he  will  get  there  and  where  the  money  is  to 
come  from  to  get  his  ticket ;  and  to  buy  food  and 
clothing  while  he  is  there,  since  he  can't  farm  or 
run  a  business  and  go  around  with  the  invitation 
at  the  same  time ;  and  how  their  money  is  going  to 
help  send  him  there  and  help  keep  him  at  it.  And 
as  she  talks  his  dear,  unselfish,  little  heart  is  aflame 
with  the  desire  to  do  something  to  help. 

That,  dear  reader,  is  impression,  the  first  prin- 
ciple of  education  and  that  is,  for  the  most  part, 
zvhere  wc  have  stopped  with  our  good  zvork..  Now, 
however,  there  is  a  change.     The  little  man  jumps 


WHY      THEY     FAIL  185 

down  off  her  knee  to  run  around  the  house  to  have 
another  look  at  that  onion  bed  and  to  get  the  sprink- 
Hng  can  to  sprinkle  those  onions  once  more,  or 
maybe  to  pluck  a  weed  he  finds  there ;  and  so  the 
good  impression  is  translated  into  the  correlative 
good  action,  which  by  its  reflex  automatically  builds 
very  silently,  by  so  much,  that  good  action  cell  in 
his  brain,  and  at  the  same  time  an  association  track 
is  laid  between  the  two. 

And  all  Summer  long,  eveiy  time  he  looks  at  that 
onion  bed  it  preaches  to  him  such  a  powerful  ser- 
mon about  the  great  world  outside  himself  that 
needs  his  help,  as  neither  you  nor  I  can  preach,  and 
his  little  soul  is  growing  outward  by  its  own  activ- 
ity as  God  ordained  that  it  should  grow. 

And  the  wise  mother  sees  to  it  that  her  partner 
often  relieves  her  by  feeding  her  chickens,  always 
keeping  alive  by  some  more  or  less  direct  allusion 
the  connection  between  what  he  is  doing  and  the 
Great  Task  for  which  it  is  done,  for  she  knows  the 
greater  number  of  beneficent  reflexes  she  can  induce 
in  that  growing  brain,  the  more  princely  man  she 
shall  see  coming  through  her  gate  by  and  by. 

"I  think  I  am  in  the  ministry  to-day  because  my 
mother  gave  me  a  missionary  hen,"  said  a  gentle- 
man to  the  writer  one  day  as  he  eulogized  this 
scheme.  The  hen  he  fed  and  because  he  fed  her, 
was  the  greatest  preacher  he  ever  knew.  Said  an- 
other, a  lady  who  by  her  devoted  life  lifted  the  moral 
tone  of  the  whole  settlement  in  which  she  lived,  as 
the  I.  G.  G.  C.  idea,  then  in  its  infancy,  was  laid 
before  her:  "That  is  true.  If  I  am  anything  to-day 
it  is  because  my  mother  gave  us  a  missionary  tree 
when  we  were  children." 

So  then  you  keep  that  little  man  not  only  hearing 
about  the  great  world  outside  himself  that  needs 


186  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

his  help,  and  dreaming  about  it,  but  actually  doing 
something  through  the  ten  or  more  plastic  years  of 
his  life  to  help  it  out,  and  when  by  and  by  the  finger 
of  God  touches  him  into  life  and  he  comes  into  the 
Church,  he  will  know  what  a  Church  is  for,  and  he 
will  hold  up  his  end  as  naturally  as  he  skates  and 
walks,  and  for  precisely  the  same  reason — because 
he  has  been  doing  it  for  ten  years  already.  Milo  of 
Crotona  carried  the  full-grown  bull  around  the 
walls  of  the  town  only  because  he  grew  to  the 
task  by  carrying  it  daily,  first  as  a  calf  and  then  as 
it  grew.  The  Laymen's  Movement  is  a  fine  thing 
to  have,  but  a  finer  thing  still  to  have  is  a  new 
Laymen's  Movement  that  shall  begin  operations 
sixteen  years  before  the  members  record  their  first 
electoral  vote. 

Every  man's  life  is  dominated  in  the  last  analysis 
by  one  of  four  great  motives :  Power,  pleasure, 
pelf  or  usefulness.  Only  as  a  character  is  shaped 
by  the  last  do  we  have  a  truly  regal  man.  Tolstoi 
forsakes  his  bowers  of  ease  to  live  on  rude  fare, 
in  a  rude  hut  among  the  peasants  that  he  may  learn 
their  sorrows  and  voice  their  inarticulate  cry  to  the 
world;  the  Countess  Schermerhorn,  intimate  friend 
of  the  Empress  of  Germany,  forsakes  the  splendor 
and  admiration  of  an  imperial  court  that  she  may 
minister  to  the  fisher-folk  she  finds  neglected  by  all, 
and  becomes  known  as  the  Mother  of  the  sailors  of 
the  world;  Dr.  Grenfel  gives  up  his  brilliant  pros- 
pects in  medicine  amid  cultured  surroundings  that 
he  may  through  incredible  hardships  minister  heal- 
ing to  the  lonely  inhabitants  along  the  inhospitable 
shores  of  Labrador;  and  as  they  pass  before  us  we 
bow  very  low,  recognizing  that  a  greater  than  Car- 
negie or  Rockefeller  or  Pierrepont  Morgan  is  here, 
for  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world  is  not  to  have 
but  to  help. 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  187 

"They  soon  grow  old  that  grope  for  gold 

In  marts  where  all  is  bought  and  sold ; 

Who  live  for  self,  and  on  some  shelf 

In  darkened  vaults  hoard  up  their  pelf; 

Cankered  and  crusted  o'er  with  mold, 

F'or    them    their    j-outh    itself    is    sold" — if    the 

poet  will  forgive  the  prefixing  of  the  letter  "s"  to 

the  last  word  of  the  last  line. 

PRACTICy\LITY 

The  fourth  corner-stone  of  an  imperial  character 
is  practicality.  Practicality  is  that  quality  in  a 
man  which  enables  him  to  see  things  as  they  are 
and  to  turn  them  to  good  account.  Strictly  speak- 
ing it  is  not  an  ethical  but  rather  an  intellectual 
quality,  a  characteristic  of  mind  rather  than  of 
soul ;  but  it  is  so  essential  to  an  imperial  character 
that  we  have  to  consider  it.  It  bears  a  very  direct 
relation  to  the  theme  before  us,  for  it  is  conceivable 
that  a  boy  might  be  honest,  manly  and  generous, 
and  yet  be  of  that  dreamy,  visionary  type  which 
never  sees  things  as  they  are  and  is  always  slip- 
ping a  cog  when  it  comes  to  the  final  test  of  action. 
The  imperial  man  is  a  man  who  has  power  to  bring 
things  to  pass  in  that  sphere  in  which  God  has 
placed  him,  and  practicality  is  that  mental  gearing 
in  him  which  profitably  links  his  will,  purpose, 
knowledge  and  character  to  the  thing  to  be  done. 

As  some  boys  have  those  sections  of  the  brain 
which  give  power  to  draw  or  remember  musical 
tones,  unusually  well  developed,  so  others  have  the 
practical  action  cells  unusually  strong  as  a  native 
endowment.  They  are  given  to  dicker  and  bargain 
and  whether  it  be  alleys,  tops,  knives  or  rabbits 
they  "swap"  they  never  have  reason  to  repent  at 
leisure.  It  is  pleasant  to  see  boys  of  that  make-up. 
It  is  from  their  ranks  our  captains  of  industry  are 


188  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

recruited  and  also  many  of  their  lesser  satellites, 
whose  daily  routine  of  business  is  so  bewildering 
in  its  detail  it  makes  us  dizzy  to  merely  contem- 
plate it.  But  that  kind  of  boy  needs  the  Industrial 
Guild  training  in  order  that  he  may  achieve  a  bal- 
anced character.  Where  any  faculty  is  excessively 
strong  there  is  a  persistent  tendency  to  exercise 
it  for  the  sheer  joy  we  derive  from  doing  so. 
Millionaires  care  very  little  for  the  money;  it  is 
for  the  game  they  care.  There  is  always  a  joy  born 
of  the  exercise  of  power,  and  power  is  one  of  the 
most  intoxicating  cups  ever  poised  in  human  hand. 

It  follows  that  boys  of  particularly  strong  com- 
mercial instincts  will  be  subject  to  a  peculiar  cor- 
relative temptation — that  of  over-reaching  their  fel- 
lows. The  wise  father  will  see  at  once  that  such  a 
disposition  requires  as  a  corrective,  a  course  in  al- 
truism and  honesty.  The  boy  must  be  given  op- 
portunity to  go  wrong  that  he  may  know  himself, 
and  then  be  brought  face  to  face  with  his  deed  and 
with  the  right,  while  there  is  yet  time  to  reshape  his 
conduct,  and  before  "his  spinal  cord  is  thoroughly 
organized  around  evil  and  all  the  atoms  of  his  being 
play  in  tune  to  unworthy  impulses."  It  may  seem 
hard  to  thus  talk  of  deliberately  exposing  the  boy 
to  temptation,  but  life  is  doing  it  for  him  every 
day,  with  or  without  our  consent,  and  a  little  of 
the  serum  by  way  of  moral  vaccination  will  not  do 
him  any  harm,  provided  there  be  reasonable  care 
in  the  surgery  and  proper  nursing. 

But  where  there  is  one  boy  of  that  sort  there  are 
a  dozen  who  are  not  of  a  sufficiently  practical  turn. 
They  are  fond  of  books  and  fond  of  fun  but  they 
don't  take  to  work.  And  if  they  do  have  to  do  busi- 
ness the  last  state  of  it  is  apt  to  be  worse  than 
the  first.  It  is  only  when  they  have  all  but  ruined 
their  employers  and  blighted  their  own  reputations 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  189 

in  the  commercial  world  that  they  attain  to  a  sav- 
ing degree  of  that  sagacity,  which  in  their  success- 
ful rivals  seems  to  be  an  instinct.  They  never  get  to 
that  point  where  they  can  honestly  say  they  love 
their  work,  and  yet  their  rivals  would  rather  work 
than  eat. 

Is  it  not  thus  with  them  because  they  were 
caught  too  late?  "It  is  hard  to  learn  an  old  dog 
new  tricks,"  runs  a  homely  old  adage.  If  we  had 
taken  the  boy  in  his  tender  years  and  given  him  a 
little  business  of  his  own — an  altruistic  business 
lest  his  soul  grow  inward  and  selfish — instead  of 
waiting  till  he  graduated  from  high  school  or  col- 
lege, might  we  not  have  helped  him  very  materially 
along  the  thorny  way  he  had  to  tread? 

Now  that  is  precisely  what  the  Industrial  Guild 
of  the  Great  Commission  is  calculated  to  do.  The 
boy  has  his  own  business  which  he  is  obliged,  once 
he  undertakes  it,  to  conduct  in  a  thoroughly  busi- 
ness-like way.  It  may  be  a  very  small  afifair  but 
the  wise  father  will  see  that  it  is  run  just  as  if 
it  were  a  ten  thousand  dollar  concern.  The  boy 
early  learns  by  experience  about  business  forms 
and  business  honor.  He  gives  and  takes  receipts, 
learns  what  thousands  of  good  church  members  of 
twenty  years'  standing  have  apparently  yet  to  learn, 
that  the  date  of  maturity  of  a  note  is  of  as  much 
importance  to  the  holder  as  the  date  of  the  signa- 
ture, and  that  the  evil  day  cannot  with  honor  be 
ignored ;  that  a  note  must  be  met  or  otherwise 
provided  for  on  maturity;  that  no  man  has  a  right 
to  use  another  man's  money  without  paying  the 
tax  we  call  interest;  that  there  may  be  such  a  thing 
as  deferred  payments  where  there  is  a  reasonable 
expectation  of  meeting  them,  etc.,  etc.  Such  a  business 
course  covering  ten  years  will  make  the  boy  so 
familiar  with  ordinary  business  procedure  that  the 


190  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

smoothest  green  goods  agent  in  the  land  will  find 
him  anything  but  the  fool  he  looks. 

Boys  who  have  a  business  of  their  very  own  will 
learn  more  about  that  business  in  a  week  by  a  kind 
of  mental  absorption  than  we  could  have  prodded 
into  them  with  a  sharp  stick  in  a  year.  They  may 
not  be  particularly  interested  in  their  father's  busi- 
ness or  in  that  of  anyone  else,  but  the  horse  is  of 
another  color  when  it  is  their  own.  They  have  in 
that  a  proprietary  interest,  and  so  deeply  rooted 
is  that  instinct  in  human  nature  that  Prof.  James 
says  of  it:  "It  seems  essential  to  mental  health 
that  the  individual  should  have  something  beyond 
the  bare  clothes  on  his  back  to  which  he  can  assert 
exclusive  possession  and  which  he  may  defend 
adversely  against  the  world.  Even  those  religious 
orders  which  make  the  most  stringent  vows  of 
poverty  have  found  it  necessary  to  relax  the  rule  a 
little  in  favor  of  the  human  heart  made  unhappy 
by  reduction  to  too  disinterested  terms.  The  monk 
must  have  his  books;  the  nun  must  have  her  little 
garden,  and  the  images  and  pictures  in  her  room." 

The  practical  as  well  as  the  mental  value  of 
our  course  of  training  may  be  made  clearer  by  an 
illustration.  Here  is  a  firm  of  boys  living  in  a  fruit- 
raising  district.  They  go  to  their  father  or  their 
uncle  or  anyone  else,  and  say:  "Our  firm  would 
like  to  buy  that  apple  tree  in  your  orchard.  We 
will  pay  you  so  much  this  year  and  so  much  each 
year  for  the  following  five  years,  interest  at  six  per 
cent."  "All  right,"  he  says,  and  the  tree  passes 
over  to  the  boys.  What  then?  Those  boys  im- 
mediately develop  a  marvellous  interest  in  the  tree 
business  that  they  never  had  before,  and  their  ears 
are  wide  open  whenever  their  elders  are  talking 
about  fruit  soil,  fruit  markets,  fruit  packing,  fruit 
picking,  tree  pests  and  tree  fertilizers,  etc.,  and  they 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  191 

begin  to  absorb  information  which  used  to  pass  by 
them  Hke  "the  idle  wind  which  we  respect  not." 
Give  the  boy  ten  or  more  years  of  that  kind  of 
intelhgent  absorption  and  he  will  know  a  whole 
lot  more  about  his  future  business  than  he  would 
have  known  if  he  had  not  begun  to  take  a  living 
interest  in  it  till  he  was  a  man  full  grown. 

It  is  of  the  nature  of  a  healthy,  growing  boy  to 
be  active.  There  are  physiological  reasons  for  this. 
The  heart  almost  doubles  in  size  and  the  blood  is 
driven  like  a  roaring  Niagara  through  his  veins. 
Frictional  energy  of  reflex  origin  is  developed  in 
the  form  of  nervous  stimuli  that  pour  into  the 
brain  incessantly,  so  that  he  is  driven  as  by  a  very 
demon  of  restlessness  to  action  of  some  sort.  This 
is  the  stage  of  his  existence  of  which  the  great 
philosopher-humorist  of  America,  Dr.  Robert  J. 
Burdette,  speaks  in  his  famous  lecture  on  "The 
Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Moustache"  when  he  tells  us 
that  the  boy  "converses  in  ordinary  confidential 
moments  in  a  shriek,"  and  "wears  his  hat  more  in 
the  air  than  on  his  head."  His  activity  may  be  either 
vicious  or  harmless,  but  action  of  some  sort  there 
will  be,  and  we  might  just  as  well  get  a  corner  on 
some  of  this  surplus  energy  and  turn  it  to  good 
account. 

In  giving  this  energy  a  practical  turn  we  are  doing 
much  to  sharpen  the  boy's  wits  for  the  grim  struggle 
later  on.  The  careful  conduct  of  his  own  business 
will  not  only  awaken  dormant  powers  which  other- 
wise might  have  atrophied,  but  it  will  by  a  kind  of 
assimilative  reflex  action  develop  the  power  to  ab- 
sorb and  apply  the  worldly  wisdom  which  he  is 
destined  to  pick  up  in  various  w^ays  later  on  in  life. 

An  illustration  from  Prof.  Judd's  laboratory  work 
may  serve  to  make  clear  what  is  meant  by  this.  In 
the  "Educational  Review"  of  1908,  writing  on  "Special 


193  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

Training  and  General  Intelligence"  he  describes  an 
experiment  made  to  determine  the  value  of  theory 
as  related  to  practice.  Two  groups  of  boys  were 
required  to  hit  a  target  under  twelve  inches  of  water 
with  a  dart.  One  group  was  given  theoretical  in- 
struction regarding  the  difficulty  of  hitting  a  target 
under  water  because  of  the  deflection  caused  by 
refraction  of  the  light  rays.  The  other  group  was 
left  in  ignorance  of  refraction. 

In  the  first  series  of  trials  the  first  group  had  no 
advantage  over  ^he  others  who  were  uninstructed. 
"All  the  boys  had  to  learn  to  use  the  dart  and 
theory  proved  to  be  no  substitute  for  practice.  At 
this  point  the  conditions  were  changed.  The  twelve 
inches  were  reduced  to  four.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  two  groups  of  boys  now  came  out  very 
strikingly.  The  boys  without  theory  were  very 
much  confused.  The  practice  gained  with  twelve 
inches  of  water  did  not  help  them  with  four  inches. 
Their  errors  were  large  and  persistent.  On  the 
other  hand  the  boys  who  had  the  theory  fitted  them- 
selves to  four  inches  very  rapidly.  Their  theory 
evidently  helped  them  to  see  why  they  must  not 
apply  the  twelve-inch  habit  to  four  inches  of  water. 
Note  that  the  theory  was  not  of  value  till  it  was 
backed  by  practice ;  but  when  practice  and  theory 
were  both  present  the  best  adjustment  was  rapidly 
worked  out.  Such  experiences  as  this,"  Prof.  Judd 
adds,  "make  it  clear  that  every  experience  has  in 
it  the  possibilities  of  generalization." 

"It  is  not  a  pound  of  theory  to  an  ounce  of  prac- 
tice that  is  wanted,"  says  Prof.  Legge,  Director  of 
Education  in  Liverpool,  England,  "but  rather  a 
pound  of  practice  to  an  ounce  of  theory;  and  so 
in  the  Reformatory  and  Industrial  Schools,  the  in- 
dustrial training  will  generally  be  found  to  con- 
sist of  one  severe  theoretical  session  a  week,  fol- 


WHY.     THEY     F'AIL  193 

lowed  by  four  or  five  sessions  of  constructive  work 
in  the  actual  workshop." 

It  frequently  occurs  that  firms  fail  because  of 
circumstances  over  which  they  have  no  control. 
The  like  thing  is  not  unknown  among  more  import- 
ant firms  downtown.  This  may  be  anything  but  a 
calamity  to  one  who  thinks  more  of  his  boy  than  he 
does  of  a  few  paltry  dollars.  Defeat  is  often  more 
valuable  than  success.  It  affords  the  opportunity  to 
pluck  a  crown  from  the  spear.  Some  boys  are 
naturally  so  buoyant  that  they  are  no  sooner  keeled 
over  than  they  are  right-side  up  again.  That  is 
a  blessed  disposition  to  have,  and  the  boy  who  is 
so  fortunate  as  to  be  built  that  way,  provided  he 
has  the  necessary  balance  of  other  required  char- 
acteristics, is  starred  for  success.  Unfortunately 
many  boys  are  not  so  constructed.  When  they  get 
knocked  down  they  are  disposed  to  lie  there  or  to  sit 
up  and  cry.  Under  proper  guidance  firm  failure 
may  be  the  best  possible  thing  that  could  happen 
to  a  boy  like  that.  He  must  be  led  to  see  that  such 
things  as  that  are  merely  incidental  in  our  progress 
through  life ;  that  they  happen  repeatedly  to  grown 
folk,  who  do  not  therefore  throw  up  the  sponge  and 
weep  uselessly  over  their  losses.  Farmers  lose  their 
crops  through  frost,  hail  or  drought,  but  they  plant 
them  again  next  year  just  as  usual;  firms  fail  in 
business  but  they  start  up  again ;  others  see  their 
homes,  representing  the  savings  of  years,  go  up  in 
smoke,  but  they  don't  go  to  the  poor-house  on  that 
account;  they  set  out  to  retrieve  their  fallen  for- 
tunes and  build  another  one.  To  do  less  is  the 
only  shameful  failure,  and  hence  the  firms  must  stay 
with  it  till  they  "make  good,"  carrying  over  their 
expenses  and  charging  them  up  against  next  year's 
operations. 

Prof.  Titchener  in  his  "Experimental  Psychology," 


194  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

a  work   given   up   chiefly  to   laboratory   methods, 
talks  to  the  students  as  follows : 

"Do  not  call  upon  the  instructor  at  every  hitch; 
try  to  overcome  the  difficulties  for  yourself.  If, 
however,  after  you  have  completed  an  experiment, 
you  find  that  you  have  passed  over  some  essential 
point  of  method,  or  neglected  some  source  of  error, 
consult  with  the  instructor  before  repeating  it.  The 
record  of  the  experiment  as  performed,  with  em- 
phatic statement  of  mistakes,  may  be  considered 
by  him  as  more  valuable  to  you  than  the  same  ex- 
periment correctly  performed  at  a  double  expense 
of  time." 

It  has  been  said  that  the  Industrial  Guild  has 
two  classes  of  members,  seniors  and  juniors.  If, 
so  far  as  the  juniors  are  concerned,  its  primary 
function  is  educational  and  its  secondary  function 
is  finance,  the  case  is  just  the  reverse  so  far 
as  the  seniors  are  involved.  It  has  educational 
value  to  them  also,  though  on  account  of  the  in- 
creased induration  of  the  brain  tissues  it  is  not  so 
striking  as  in  the  case  of  the  others.  Yet  it  is  very 
considerable  too,  for  an  adult  no  sooner  begins 
action  in  this  way  than  he  becomes  conscious  of 
a  new  glow  within  him.  He  finds  the  new  doctrine 
of  motor  discharges  is  revolutionary,  changing  en- 
tirely the  polarity  of  his  life  on  that  small  scale 
in  which  he  is  active.  All  his  life  he  has  been 
making  money  for  himself  and  giving  some  of  it  to 
the  Lord;  in  this  he  turns  that  right  about  and 
makes  money  for  the  Lord  while  he  keeps  some  of 
it  for  himself,  i.  e.,  the  expenses  which  come  back 
to  him.  He  realizes  on  a  small  scale  the  ideal  of 
stewardship,  and  whereas  all  his  life  it  has  been 
self  first  and  the  Kingdom  of  God  second,  it  is  now 
the  Kingdom  of  God  first  and  self  second,  and  so 
he  swings  into  line  with  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  195 

and  with  the  angels  and  with  all  Heaven.  The 
reflex  of  it  is  to  let  a  ray  of  Heaven's  glory  into 
his  soul.  He  is  apt  to  feel  that  somehow  this  is  the 
sweetest  money  he  ever  gave.  And  why?  Because 
he  has  given  more  than  money;  he  has  given  himself 
in  the  getting  of  it. 

Out  on  the  prairies  of  the  fertile  Province  of 
Manitoba  the  writer  dined  one  day  in  a  certain 
home.  In  the  course  of  the  hour  these  principles 
came  up  for  discussion,  and  afterward,  while  "hitch- 
ing up"  in  the  yard,  a  young  woman,  a  domestic 
in  the  home,  who  had  heard  the  conversation,  came 
out  and  offered  him  a  dollar. 

"Well,  now,  the  Lord  bless  your  good  heart,"  I 
replied,  "but  I'm  afraid  I  can't  take  it."  She  looked 
up  in  astonishment  and  wanted  to  know  why.  It 
was  probably  something  new  to  find  a  preacher 
refusing  money  for  missions,  "Now,  my  dear  girl, 
you  made  that  money  for  yourself,  didn't  you?"  She 
said,  "Yes."  "Well,"  I  said,  "the  only  money  we 
take  is  new  money,  made  on  purpose  to  extend  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  We  are  all  working  at  the  task  the 
Master  has  left  us  to  do,  and  if  you  want  to  join  us 
you  will  have  to  work  at  it,  too." 

So  she  went  away,  but  in  a  few  moments  she  re- 
turned saying,  "You  may  take  my  name.  I'll  work 
a  month  for  the  Lord  Jesus  this  year." 

Do  you  not  think  that  month  v/ould  be  a  blessed 
month  to  her?  That  service  would  be  a  sacrament 
to  her  soul.  She  would  have  real  fellowship  with 
Jesus  Christ  all  the  time.  She  was  really  working 
for  Him  and  with  Him,  working  in  a  way  which 
cannot  be  discounted  in  this  world  or  any  other. 
Talk  may  be  cheap  but  actions  are  the  gold  coins  of 
God's  realm,  and  that  girl  was  as  really  a  missionary 
as  any  man  who  has  gone  to  heathendom.  He  uses 
his  gifts  and  his  training  and  she  uses  hers,  but  both 


196  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

are  working  at  the  same  task,  and  what  the  King- 
dom of  God  needs  to-day  more  than  it  needs  any- 
thing else  is  an  army  of  men  and  women  bearing  the 
name  of  Christ,  who  will  quit  talking  and  address 
themselves  to  the  Task  along  the  lines  of  their  own 
gifts,  training  and  opportunity,  in  such  homely  prac- 
tical ways. 

The  world  would  speedily  be  evangelized  if  we 
could  get  every  Christian  in  America  to  do  as  many 
of  our  firms  in  the  Industrial  Guild  have  already 
done — make  one  cent  a  day  extra  to  give  effect  to 
the  Great  Commission.  Most  of  the  adult  members 
could  easily  do  it.  It  is  largely  a  matter  of  organiz- 
ing and  getting  them  at  it.  And  were  it  done  we 
should  have  about  four  times  more  money  for  mis- 
sions than  the  whole  Church  with  all  her  subsidiary 
organizations,  including  the  Laymen's  Movement, 
has  put  up,  and  no  one  in  doing  it  would  be  a  cent 
out  of  pocket.  What  is  more,  the  reflex  of  the  activ- 
ity on  the  life  of  the  Church  in  other  ways  would  be 
incalculable.  It  would  immensely  deepen  the  heart 
interest  in  sermons  and  other  religious  exercises, 
and  it  would  very  appreciably  enlarge  the  giving 
through  the  regular  channels.  The  service  may  be 
humble,  hard,  amusing,  or  even  ridiculous  at  times, 
but  there  is  this  about  it — the  most  sneering  skeptic 
cannot  deny  its  reality.  To  see  that  mechanic 
or  that  farmer  or  that  laborer,  out  there  toiling  in 
the  sweat  of  his  face  that  the  Kingdom  of  One  un- 
seen may  be  extended,  is  to  see  a  new  and  valid 
testimony  to  the  reality  of  Christianity.  The  laugh 
is  on  the  surface ;  behind  it  there  is  a  new  respect 
for  the  sincerity  of  this  man,  who,  to  that  extent  at 
any  rate,  is  living  his  religion  and  not  giving  the 
lie  to  his  professed  beliefs. 

Why  should  not  our  forces  be  organized  along  this 
line?     There  are  swarms  of  warm-hearted  believers 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  197 

who  are  dying  because  they  do  not  know  just 
what  to  do.  Here  is  something  they  can  all  do,  or 
mostly  all.  They  can't  all  be  teachers  and  officers, 
and  they  get  weary  of  the  ordinary  routine.  Not 
that  that  routine  is  worthless ;  far  from  it.  It  is 
exceedingly  valuable,  but  it  is  incomplete  and  there- 
fore insufficient.  The  motor  discharges  are  not  ade- 
quate in  number,  variety  or  direction,  and  it  is  pre- 
cisely something  like  this  which  is  required  to  give 
balance  and  new  life  to  our  Leagues,  Endeavors  and 
young  peoples'  societies  generally. 

There  is  another  strong  reason  why  we  should 
have  an  adult  membership  thus  putting  to  the  high- 
est use  economically  some  of  their  spare  time.  It 
is  not  only  because  of  the  potential  millions  involved 
but  because  of  the  incalculable  reflex  of  their  un- 
conscious influence,  particularly  in  the  lives  of  the 
children.  The  faculty  of  imitation  is  one  of  the 
most  persistent  and  powerful  of  all  the  forces  that 
mold  human  society,  and  it  fairly  fills  the  sky  in 
a  child's  life.  Social  customs,  manners,  dress,  etc., 
show  us  how  we  bow  our  own  necks  to  the  yoke. 
If  you  don't  believe  that  just  heave  a  capacious 
yawn  and  see  how  many  of  the  company  will  be 
able,  without  conscious  eflfort,  to  keep  from  follow- 
ing you. 

The  fact  is  that  the  acts  of  other  people  furnish 
most  powerful  stimuli  to  action  on  our  part.  If 
we  find  half  a  dozen  people  gazing  in  at  a  store 
window  we  must  stop  and  have  a  look  too.  Ex- 
ample is  ever  so  much  better  than  precept,  and 
therefore  if  the  father  and  mother  really  love  their 
children  (big  brothers  and  sisters  also)  they  will 
go  into  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  if  for  no  other  reason  than 
that  their  influence  may  tell  in  the  right  direction 
on  the  dear  ones  coming  after. 

That  this  is  no  theory  but  a  cold  fact,  Prof.  Miin- 


198  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

sterberg  shows  us  in  his  laboratory.     The  extract 
is  from  his  "Psychology  and  Crime,"  p.  248. 

"We  said  that  crime  involves  an  impulse  to  action 
which  is  normally  to  be  checked.  The  checking 
will  be  the  more  difficult  the  stronger  the  impulse. 
The  psychologist  therefore  asks:  What  influences 
have  the  power  to  reinforce  the  impulse?  Has,  for 
instance,  imitation  such  an  influence?  Mere  specu- 
lation cannot  answer  such  a  question,  and  even  so- 
called  practical  experience  may  lead  to  very  mis- 
taken conclusions  But  the  laboratory  experiment 
can  tell  the  story  in  distinct  figures.  I  ask  my  sub- 
jects, for  instance,  to  make  rhythmical  finger  move- 
ments by  which  a  weight  is  lifted,  and  the  apparatus 
in  which  the  arm  rests  records  exactly  the  amount 
of  every  contraction.  After  a  while  the  energy  seems 
exhausted;  my  idea  has  no  longer  the  power  to  lift 
the  weight  more  than  a  few  millimetres ;  the  re- 
corded curve  sinks  nearly  to  zero.  I  try  with  en- 
couraging words  or  harsh  command ;  the  motor  en- 
ergies of  these  word  stimuli  are  not  effective ;  the 
curve  shows  a  slight  upward  movement  but  again 
it  sinks  rapidly.  And  then  I  make  the  same  rhythmi- 
cal movement  myself  before  the  eyes  of  my  subject; 
he  sees  it  and  at  once  the  curve  ascends  with  unex- 
pected strength.  The  movements  have  now  simply 
to  imitate  the  watched  ones,  and  this  consciousness 
of  imitation  has  reinforced  the  energy  of  the  impulse 
beyond  any  point  which  his  own  will  could  have 
reached.  It  is  as  if  the  imitation  of  the  suggestive 
sight  suddenly  brings  to  work  all  the  stored-up 
powers.  The  psychologist  can  vary  the  experiment 
in  a  hundred  forms ;  always  the  same  result,  that 
the  impressive  demonstration  of  an  action  gives 
to  the  impulse  of  the  imitating  mind  the  maximum 
of  force — it  must  then  be  the  one  condition  under 
which  it  is  the  most  difficult  to  inhibit  the  impulse." 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  199 

Physiologists  tell  us  that  growth  is  not  a  uniform 
process.  There  will  be  a  period  of  rapid  extension 
followed  by  a  period  in  which  there  is  little  or 
nothing  doing  in  that  line.  The  physical  energies 
seem  to  be  given  up  to  assimilation  and  consolida- 
tion of  what  has  been  acquired.  So  also  in  mental 
work,  such  for  example  as  the  acquisition  of  a  new 
tongue.  Psychologists  comment  on  the  ease  with 
which  the  first  few  lessons  are  absorbed  and  then  the 
period  of  more  limited  progress  followed  by  another 
spurt.  This  caprice  of  nature  leads  Prof.  James  to 
say  in  his  own  striking  way  that  we  "learn  to  swim 
in  Winter  and  to  skate  in  Summer."  Hence  in  our 
Industrial  Guild  work  we  do  not  crowd  our  juniors 
all  the  time.  The  Winter's  rest  gives  them  a  new 
zest  for  work  in  the  Spring  and  so  they  are  happy 
all  the  time.  It  is  of  the  utmost  importance  at  all 
times  not  to  push  the  boy  beyond  a  natural  gait. 
As  in  walking  so  in  other  things  we  have  a  natural 
pace — a  limit  within  which  we  can  do  comfortably, 
and  any  labor  imposed  beyond  that  is  labor  indeed, 
and  apt  to  react  unfavorably  on  us,  especially  if 
long  continued. 

A  word  as  to  the  history  and  the  management  of 
the  Industrial  Guild  may  fittingly  conclude  this 
chapter.  It  represents  so  far  as  the  writer  is  con- 
cerned an  educational  experiment  in  applied  Chris- 
tianity which  has  had  three  phases.  The  first  was 
that  in  connection  with  the  local  church.  At  Mount 
View,  N.  B.,  a  rural  district  subsidiary  to  the  church 
of  which  the  writer  was  at  the  time  pastor,  the 
institution  was  born  in  the  Spring  of  1903.  It  had 
thirty  members  and  a  constitution  of  its  own  with 
the  usual  frills — but  few  meetings.  The  meetings 
were  left  to  the  others.  It  met  four  times,  three 
times  at  the  close  of  other  meetings.  We  consid- 
ered it  our  business  not  to  talk  but  to  work.    Th§ 


200  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

returns  in  the  Fall  showed  $36.64.  Not  a  large 
sum  it  is  true,  but  so  astonishingly  large  in  com- 
parison with  what  had  been  done  there  for  missions,  . 
that  it  was  written  up  and  given  to  the  Methodist, 
Baptist  and  Presbyterian  denominational  papers  of 
the  maritime  provinces,  as  well  as  to  several  repre- 
sentative journals  across  the  line,  of  which  one,  the 
"Church  Economist,"  of  New  York,  later  amalgamated 
with  the  "Record  of  Christian  Work,"  published  it 
with  favorable  comment.  $36.64  may  not  impress 
the  world  very  much  in  itself,  but  it  seemed  signifi- 
cant as  an  index  of  possibilities  when  we  learned 
that,  so  far  as  church  records  gave  light  on  the 
subject,  the  community  produced  less  than  four 
dollars  for  missions  the  previous  year.  Moreover, 
the  money  was  obtained  so  easily  they  didn't  know 
how  it  was  done.  They  did  not  feel  any  poorer — at 
any  rate  not  till  they  began  to  think  it  over.  Which 
thing  is  symptomatic,  as  the  medical  gentlemen  say, 
and  in  itself  the  strongest  argument  which  could  be 
adduced  for  the  existence  of  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  It  was 
precisely  that  condition  which  gave  rise  to  the 
idea — only  as  a  remedial  measure  affecting  the 
Church  of  to-morrow — a  prophylactic  affecting  the 
boy  of  to-day. 

The  second  experiment  was  worked  out  on  a 
larger  scale  in  the  Canadian  Northwest  in  1905. 
This  time  an  attempt  was  made  at  organization  on 
a  larger  scale.  Unless  the  Spring  months,  which 
meant  a  year,  were  to  be  lost,  action  had  to  be 
taken  somewhat  irregularly.  The  general  delib- 
erative assembly  of  the  denomination  did  not  meet 
until  mid-Summer.  The  executive  did  not  feel  free 
to  initiate  the  movement,  considering  it  ultra  vires 
to  do  so,  but  they  were  willing  to  give  their  un- 
official blessing,  the  more  especially  as  the  repre- 
sentatives of  their  churches  in  the  Province  of  Al- 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  201 

berta,  assembled  in  annual  convocation  had  unani- 
mously passed,  on  motion  of  Rev.  C.  W.  Corey,  and 
after  two  hours'  discussion,  the  following  resolu- 
tion: 

"We  have  heard  with  great  pleasure  the  presenta- 
tion of  the  work  of  the  Industrial  Guild  of  the  Great 
Commission  by  our  brother.  A,  T.  Robinson,  and, 
believing  the  principle  of  the  Guild  to  be  sound  and 
practical,  we  would  commend  it  and  Brother  Robin- 
son's presentation  of  it  to  our  churches  as  a  means 
fraught  with  great  possibilities  both  in  character 
development  and  in  funds  for  the  extension  of  the 
Kingdom.  We  believe  the  work  of  the  Guild  to  be 
such  that  we  would  call  the  attention  of  the  Execu- 
tive Board  of  the  Northwest  Convention  to  the 
same,  asking  that  they  might  give  consideration 
to  it  with  a  view  to  having  organization  along  this 
line  effected  at  an  early  date." 

This  the  Executive  Board  did  not  feel  free  to  do, 
avowing  that  it  was  an  executive,  not  a  legislative, 
body.  It  became  necessary  therefore,  if  a  year's 
time  was  to  be  saved,  that  action  should  be  taken 
somewhat  irregularly,  trusting  to  the  event  to 
justify  the  move.  It  seemed  to  be  one  of  those  un- 
usual occasions  which  are  bound  to  arise,  when 
unusual  measures  have  to  be  adopted  if  the  thing 
is  not  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  form,  the  substance 
to  the  shadow,  the  end  to  the  means.  Believing 
that  all  church  machinery  is  only  a  means  to  an 
end,  useful  only  in  so  far  as  it  promotes  that  end, 
which  end  is  the  extension  of  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
the  ultra  zires  plea  of  the  Executive  Board  did  not 
seem  very  weighty,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
members  were  willing,  without  a  dissentient  voice, 
to  say  that  "unofficially  and  as  men"  they  could  see 
no  objection  to  the  thing  itself. 

With  an  editorial  statement  to  that  effect  in  the 


203  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

denominational  organ,  added  to  the  above  resolu- 
tion and  a  sheaf  of  favorable  opinions  from  men  of 
standing,  a  brief  campaign  of  organization  was  in- 
augurated. The  new  education  was  discussed  with 
the  sovereign  people  and  approved  by  them  and  the 
pastors  generally.  In  a  few  weeks  forty-tWo  organi- 
zations had  been  effected  numbering  somewhere 
between  eight  hundred  and  one  thousand  members. 
At  the  annual  convention,  following  a  presentation 
of  the  Guild,  it  was  moved  by  Rev.  W.  J.  McCor- 
mick,  seconded  by  Mr.  W.  S.  Grover  and  carried  as 
follows :  "Resolved,  that  we  adopt  the  Industrial 
Guild  of  the  Great  Commission  and  that  it  be  re- 
ferred to  the  Executive  Board  to  work  out  the  de- 
tails." 

At  a  convention  of  Guild  delegates  which  met  just 
before  this,  a  constitution  revised  to  meet  the  en- 
larged demands  of  the  new  day,  and  to  gear  the 
new  society  properly  into  the  convention  machinery, 
was  submitted  and  passed.  It  provided  for  a  state 
commissioner  and  an  advisory  council  of  five,  all 
to  be  appointed  by  the  Executive  Board  of  the  con- 
vention. The  Board  appointed  these  officers,  but 
would  assume  no  financial  responsibility  in  connec- 
tion with  the  thing,  notwithstanding  the  foregoing 
warrant.  The  Guild  had  its  own  treasurer,  but  handed 
over  its  funds  when  collected  to  the  various  denomina- 
tional treasurers  for  detail  distribution,  as  that  is  a 
matter  which  requires  a  highly  specialized  knowledge  of 
conditions,  and  as  the  other  Boards  were  the  ones 
charged  with  the  responsibilities  of  administration. 

In  the  Fall  the  returns  coming  in  showed  a  gross 
output  of  $1,770.35,  of  which  $294.80  did  not  appear 
on  Guild  books,  as  it  had  been  diverted  into  other 
channels  in  the  local  churches.  That  fact  in  itself 
is  eloquent  as  to  the  need  of  the  Industrial  Guild 


WHY,     THEY     F'AIL  203 

training.  How  much  better  would  we  all  be  if  we 
had  had  it! 

Meanwhile  a  silent  opposition  developed  among 
certain  members  of  the  Executive  Board.  This  was 
regarded  as  a  hopeful  sign,  since  the  Guild  could 
hardly  be  regarded  as  in  line  of  the  true  order  of 
succession  of  great  and  useful  institutions  if  it  got 
on  without  opposition.  The  China  Inland  Mission, 
the  Sunday-school,  the  Young  Alen's  Christian  As- 
sociation, the  great  missionary  societies,  and  the 
very  Church  itself  have  all  come,  not  without  the 
pangs  of  parturition,  and  why  should  this  expect 
to  do  so?  The  only  reason  assigned  was  that  the 
Guild  was  producing  so  much  for  missions  on  some 
fields  that  the  contributions  through  the  regular 
channels  were  being  reduced.  Were  this  the  case 
there  certainly  would  have  been  need  of  regulative 
action,  but  when  pressed  for  specific  instances  but 
two  fields  were  adduced,  on  one  of  which  it  trans- 
pired that  the  offerings  through  the  regular  channels 
were  larger  than  ever  before,  and  in  the  other  case, 
the  field  put  up  more  than  ever  before,  only  instead 
of  giving  to  missions  the  money  went  into  a  church 
building  which  they  had  undertaken  to  erect.  One 
member  who  had  given  five  hundred  dollars  the 
year  before  to  missions  felt  that  he  should  this  year 
give  it  to  the  building  fund,  and  of  course  other 
smaller  givers  felt  as  he  did  in  the  matter  and  acted 
accordingly,  so  that  any  deficiency  could  hardly 
be  charged  in  fairness  wholly  to  the  new  institution. 
In  fact,  the  newcomer  was  so  useful  that  they  seized 
on  its  method  as  a  means  of  raising  money  for  the 
furnishing  of  the  church  the  next  year. 

On  the  other  hand,  elsewhere  the  reflex  was  found 
most  helpful  from  the  standpoint  of  missionary  of- 
ferings. One  pastor  wrote  that  the  effect  was  to 
treble  the  offerings  through  the  regular  channels, 


204  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

as  actually  doing  the  little  made  them  sensible  of 
what  they  had  not  been  doing  and  ought  to  do. 

At  the  convention  in  Winnipeg  the  following  year 
the  state  commissioner  in  his  report  outlined  two 
policies,  a  smaller  or  Mission  Band  policy,  by  which 
some  settled  pastor  in  the  field  should  devote  what 
time  he  could  spare  to  the  enterprise,  and  the  other, 
a  larger  or  business  man's  policy,  according  to 
which  the  state  commissioner  should  devote  all  his 
time  to  the  work,  developing  especially  the  Isolate 
Corps,  a  company  of  scattered  units  sprinkled  over 
a  thousand  miles  of  territory,  and  related  directly 
to  his  office  as  his  own  especial  charge,  till  it  should 
be  strong  enough  to  bear  all  the  expenses  of  the 
organization,  helpfully  exercising  them,  linking 
them  to  the  denominational  life  and  work,  and  leav- 
ing all  the  local  societies  made  to  go  to  missions. 
In  case  this  policy  were  adopted  he  was  authorized 
to  state  that  a  group  of  prominent  business  men 
would  be  prepared  to  take  care  of  the  state  com- 
missioner's salary,  or,  in  any  event,  of  that  part  of 
it  which  remained  after  taking  out  of  the  Guild  pro- 
ceeds for  the  purpose  that  proportion  which  corres- 
ponded to  the  amount  of  the  receipts  of  the  other 
organizations  going  to  pay  other  official  salaries. 
They  would  have  cared  for  it  all  if  necessary,  but  it 
was  deemed  better  from  a  business  and  educational 
standpoint  to  have  the  Guild  bear  at  least  a  part  of 
the  burden. 

The  discussion  which  followed  the  report  was 
both  lively  and  favorable.  One  of  the  keenest  and 
most  prominent  members  of  the  convention,  a  gen- 
tleman of  international  standing  in  the  educational 
world,  forgetting  in  the  interest  of  the  moment  the 
rules  of  orthodox  procedure,  jumped  up  and  turning 
to  the  house  said,  "The  question  is  this:  'Is  this 
thing  worth  while?'     All  in  favor  say,  'Yes,'  con- 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  205 

trary,  'No.'  "    There  were  only  five  adverse  votes. 

But  great  is  politics.  In  the  closing  moments  of 
the  hour,  when  no  time  was  left  for  discussion,  a 
member  of  the  convention  executive  rose  up  and 
read  the  following  resolution,  which  was  typewrit- 
ten: 

"Whereas  the  convention  which  met  in  Brandon 
one  year  ago  endorsed  the  idea  of  the  Industrial 
Guild  of  the  Great  Commission  and  referred  the 
matter  to  the  consideration  of  this  board.  And, 
whereas  during  the  year  a  number  of  such  Guilds 
have  been  in  successful  operation  within  the  con- 
vention field:  Therefore,  resolved  (1)  that  this  con- 
vention commend  the  idea  of  the  Guild  to  the  favor- 
able consideration  of  the  churches  of  this  conven- 
tion field.  (2)  That  the  convention  instruct  its  Exec- 
utive Board  to  appoint  a  secretary  of  Guilds  whose 
duty  it  shall  be  to  supervise  the  operations  of  such 
Guilds  as  are  already  organized,  or  shall  be  organ- 
ized, in  connection  with  the  churches  of  this  con- 
vention, such  appointee  to  be  (a)  a  pastor  settled 
within  the  bounds  of  the  convention  (b)  allowed  a 
period  not  exceeding  two  months  each  year  for  or- 
ganization work,  if  necessary  in  the  judgment  of 
the  Executive  Board:  (c)  Remunerated  from  the 
general  treasury  at  a  rate  not  to  exceed  two  hundred 
dollars  per  annum  and  traveling  expenses.  (3)  That 
this  convention  further  instruct  its  Executive  Board 
to  name  an  executive  council  of  five  members  to 
co-operate  with  the  secretary  of  Guilds.  (4)  That 
this  convention  request  that  all  moneys  devoted 
to  mission  objects  by  the  Guilds  be  sent  to  the 
regular  treasurer  of  this  convention  to  be  credited 
by  him  to  the  Guilds  remitting." 

This  sudden,  arbitrary  and  unannounced  inter- 
ference with  an  autonomous,  working  organization, 
and  the  refusal  to  allow  it  to  work  out  its  destiny, 


206  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

even    when    means    were    provided    from    outside 
sources,  meant  inharmonious  relations. 

The  rest  is  soon  told.  The  state  commissioner 
retired  from  the  field  to  work  out  the  experiment 
once  more  under  conditions  which  would  afford  less 
chance  of  interruption.  No  successor  was  appointed, 
as  might  have  been  expected,  and  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, the  people  soon  quit  work  and  that  was  the 
last  of  it.  Nothing  goes  of  itself  except  evil.  No 
church,  no  Sunday-school,  no  lodge  runs  itself,  and 
while  it  was  claimed  for  the  Guild  that  it  ran  with 
less  expenditure  of  energy  than  anything  else  we 
have,  because  the  burden  lay  on  all  shoulders  instead 
of  on  the  few,  it  never  claimed  to  be  wholly  self- 
acting. 

The  third  experiment  was  worked  out  on  an  inde- 
pendent and  inter-denominational  basis  from  Sum- 
merland,  B.  C,  in  1910.  In  this  the  local  organiza- 
tion in  connection  with  the  local  church  was 
dropped  and  the  Isolate  Corps  feature  became  the 
institution.  Every  firm  was  related  directly  to  the 
central  office.  Parents  or  other  interested  adults 
co-operated  in  oversight  of  juvenile  members.  A 
line  of  communication  with  them  was  opened  up  by 
means  of  a  monthly  message  and  a  quarterly  publi- 
cation named  "The  Missionary  Arena,"  which  was 
devoted  to  the  work.  Mr.  Robert  Pollock,  of  Sum- 
merland,  a  splendid  young  Scotchman  of  long  com- 
mercial training,  acted  as  treasurer.  The  manager 
of  the  Bank  of  Montreal  nominated  Mr.  I.  B.  Fulton, 
an  experienced  accountant,  as  auditor,  and  thus 
the  new  machinery  was  made  ready  for  business. 

Through  the  courtesy  and  candor  of  Rev.  C.  A. 
Meyers,  pastor  of  the  McDougall  Avenue  Presby- 
terian Church  in  Edmonton,  a  gentleman  of  tireless 
energy,  intense  devotion  and  marked  executive  abil- 
ity, the  way  was  opened  to  lay  the  new  education 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  207 

before  the  Edmonton-Strathcona  Ministerial  Asso- 
ciation. It  received  kind  treatment  at  their  hands, 
and  after  a  general  discussion  the  following  reso- 
lution was  passed  unanimously, 

"Resolved,  that  we,  the  Ministerial  Association  of 
Edmonton  and  Strathcona,  having  listened  to  Mr. 
Robinson's  splendid  address  explaining  the  methods 
and  working  of  the  I.  G.  G.  C.,  show  our  hearty 
appreciation  and  endorsation  of  this  scheme  by 
commending  it  to  the  sympathy  and  co-operation 
of  pastors,  parents  and  all  Christian  workers." 

This  kindness  did  much  to  open  the  doors  for  a 
presentation  of  the  work  in  other  towns.  Union 
meetings  were  held,  usually  in  the  largest  churches 
obtainable.  Once  again  there  was  the  same  result. 
The  people  heard  gladly  the  exposition  of  the  prin- 
ciples involved  in  this  discussion,  and  assented  cor- 
dially. Throughout  that  tour  no  voice,  so  far  as  the 
writer  is  aware,  was  raised  in  depreciation  of  the 
enterprise.  Indeed,  from  the  beginning  no  valid 
objection  has  ever  been  raised  against  the  Guild. 
Its  principles  commend  themselves  at  once  to  the 
common-sense  of  mankind,  and  in  practice  there  is 
found  after  all,  a  desire  in  many  hearts  to  do  a 
little  more  for  Christ  and  humanity,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  family,  when  only  \hcy  know  what  to  do 
and  have  good  company  on  the  way.  The  very 
brightest  people  we  met  saw  great  possibilities  in 
this  ethical  application  of  the  reflex  in  education. 
One  member  of  Parliament  said,  "That  address  of 
yours  on  'Practicality'  last  night  was  worth  two 
hundred  dollars  to  the  people  of  this  town,  and  it 
will  bear  fruit  after  you  are  gone."  Another  busi- 
ness man  said,  "I  would  give  five  dollars  to  have 
those  principles  pounded  out  in  book-form."  Here's 
his    opportunity.      Both    went    into    the    Guild    with 


208  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

their  boys,  as  also  scores  of  other  business  and  pro- 
fessional men. 

This  third  experiment  was  marked  by  another 
change.  In  order  that  there  might  be  no  ground 
for  objection  the  goal  of  endeavor  was  limited  to 
one  cent  for  each  working-day  of  the  year,  and,  as 
the  enrollment  card  indicates,  it  was  made  very 
clear  that  our  work  represented  an  extra  effort,  and 
must  not  be  in  any  way  made  an  excuse  for  shirk- 
ing obligations  in  other  directions.  This  policy 
also  gives  definiteress  and  uniformity  of  aim.  Mem- 
bers can  do  ther  work  in  a  short  time  and  be  done 
with  it  where  that  is  an  object  to  them.  Education- 
ally, however,  as  has  been  said,  it  would  be  a  great 
mistake  to  choose  a  form  of  action  for  the  juveniles 
which  would  be  too  swiftly  remunerative.  The 
oftener  within  reason  they  do  a  turn  for  what  one 
little  fair-haired,  five-year-old  called  "the  desperate 
women  and  children,"  the  better. 

Unfortunately  this  experiment  was  unexpectedly 
interrupted  by  domestic  requirements.  A  physician's 
imperative  orders  to  remove  at  once  to  Santa  ]\Ionica, 
Cal.,  in  order  to  preserve  the  health  of  a  member 
of  the  writer's  household,  naturally  disturbed  the 
confidence  in  the  future  of  the  Guild  institution  and 
afforded  plausible  reasons  why  the  money  made 
should  be  diverted  into  the  known  and  regularly 
ordained  church  channels,  as  illustrated  previously 
in  the  case  of  the  second  experiment. 

The  western  business  men  believed  18.91  per  cent 
of  the  people  to  be  unblenchingly  upright  and  23.01 
per  cent  of  the  English-speaking  male  population 
to  be  manly  men.  In  this  case  twenty-one  per  cent 
of  the  firms  stood  up  to  their  pledges  and  played 
the  game  to  a  finish  while  seventy-nine  per  cent 
of  them  failed  to  report  to  the  treasurer's  office. 

Our  returns  show  52.3  cents  per  capita  for  the 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  209 

714  members  h'lg  and  little,  as  compared  with  the 
following  denominational  returns  for  foreign  mis- 
sions furnished  by  Mr.  I.  W.  Baker,  of  the  Laymen's 
Missionary  Movement,  as  quoted  in  the  "Missionary 
Review  of  the  World"  for  July,  1911: 

Baptist,  61c.;  Methodist  Episcopal  (South)  46c.; 
Disciples  of  Christ,  40c.  ;United  Evangelical,  38c. ; 
Lutheran  General  Synod,  36c. ;  Reformed  Church 
in  United  States,  36c.;  United  Brethren,  35c.;  Luth- 
eran (General  Council)   12c. 

That  basis  of  comparison  seems  hopeful  when  we 
reflect  that  the  institution  was  crippled  and  only 
half-worked. 

The  102  firms  reporting  (the  firm  is  the  unit  of 
production)  averaged  $3.65  per  firm,  and  put  up 
$373.08  in  all.  Only  fifteen  of  the  firms  reporting 
fell  below  the  cent  a  day  standard.  Were  the 
churches  to  take  the  matter  up  seriously  and  bring 
a  general,  organized  pressure  to  bear  on  the  sub- 
ject, the  growth  and  results  would  be  amazing. 

Something  further  should  be  done  by  way  of  knit- 
ting the  L  G.  G.  C.  to  the  Sunday-school.  That  is 
where  it  properly  belongs.  Not  that  it  should  be 
at  once  absorbed  by  the  Sunday-school.  The  genius 
and  work  of  the  Sunday-school  are  quite  different ; 
but  it  should,  while  maintaining  a  separate  and  in- 
dividualistic existence,  as  in  this  last  experiment, 
in  order  to  save  confusion  and  keep  clear  the  sense 
of  individual  responsibility  in  the  homes,  be  yet  so 
linked  to  the  Sunday-school  that  the  teachers  may 
tighten  up  things  by  keeping  a  contributory  eye 
on  the  work  their  boys  and  girls  are  doing.  It  is 
really  a  part  of  their  work  to  do  this  as  it  is  part  of 
the  work  of  a  day-school  teacher  to  find  and  super- 
vise the  means  of  motor  discharge  in  the  intellectual 
development  of  her  pupils. 

Because  it  is  so  vitally  related  to  the  work  of  the 


210  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

Sunday-school,  being  in  fact  the  complementary  re- 
quirement of  the  work  they  are  doing,  it  would 
seem  the  ultimate  destiny  of  the  I.  G.  G.  C.  to  come 
under  the  aegis  of  its  shield.  At  the  present  time, 
however,  because  of  the  wider  appeal,  because  of 
the  necessity  of  getting  parents  interested,  and  be- 
cause of  the  homely,  tangible  and  practical  nature 
pf  the  work  in  the  field  as  contrasted  with  the  ideal, 
idyllic  and  indoor  nature  of  the  work  of  the  Sunday- 
school  as  we  have  it,  it  would  seem  advisable  to 
let  the  amalgamation  come  about  gradually  by  a 
process  of  evolution.  This  field  of  action,  except  in 
its  ethical  bearings,  is  strange  to  the  genius  of  the 
Sunday-school  as  it  has  always  been  conducted.  It 
would  take  some  time  to  accommodate  itself  to  a 
thing  so_  foreign  to  its  wonted  usages.  But  should 
it  see  this  wild  creature  of  the  fields  running  beside 
it  and  doing  no  harm,  it  would  little  by  little  get 
accustomed  to  the  sight,  examine  it  more  closely 
and  say,  "That  is  the  very  colt  I  have  been  looking 
for  to  help  me  pull  this  load."  Although  manual 
training  is,  as  Prof.  James  says,  "The  most  colossal 
advance  in  education  in  recent  years,"  and  the  teach- 
ing profession  is  a  very  wide-awake  and  progressive 
body,  it  is  probable  that  a  good  many  more  techni- 
cal and  manual  training  schools  will  have  to  be 
built  before  that  twin  sister  of  ours  realizes  that 
manual  training  will  give  us  "an  entirely  different 
type  of  citizen,"  and  succeeds  in  taking  over  and 
installing  everywhere  the  manual  work. 

Under  any  possible  scheme  of  existence  which 
might  be  devised  for  it,  it  is  evident  the  I.  G.  G.  C. 
could  not  live  without  the  other  organizations.  It 
is  utterly  dependent  on  them.  They  keep  steam  in 
its  boilers.  Every  sermon,  Sunday-school  lesson  or 
insipring  Endeavor  address  is  an  inspiration  to  go 
out  and  do  more  for  the   Master  and  His  needy 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  211 

world.  The  Guild  has  no  devotional  or  hortatory 
ambitions.  It  is  the  homely  duckling  of  the  family, 
and  like  most  of  that  kind  it  seeks  to  be  useful. 
It  is  the  foe  of  none,  the  handmaiden  of  all — its 
highest  glory  to  give  practical  expression  to  those 
lofty  and  ennobling  sentiments  which  the  others 
know  so  much  better  how  to  declare.  Surely  some- 
where in  the  great  household  of  Faith  there  must 
be  a  small  corner  for  it. 


212  WHY.     THEY     FAIL 


Foreword  to  Chapter  VI 

"We  think  our  Sabbath  services,  our  prayers,  our 
Bible-reading  are  our  reHgion.  It  is  not  so.  We  do 
these  things  to  help  us  to  be  religious  in  other 
things.  These  are  the  mere  meals  and  a  workman 
gets  no  wages  for  his  meals.  It  is  for  the  work  he 
does." 

— Prof.  Henry  Drummond. 


CHAPTER  VI 

CONCLUSION 

It  is  quite  possible  that  objection  will  be  taken 
to  this  book  on  at  least  two  grounds,  the  first  that 
it  ignores,  or  at  least  in  effect  minimizes,  the  need 
of  what  is  known  as  conversion  and  is  practically  a 
plea  for  salvation  by  culture.  In  view  of  what 
has  been  said  in  the  early  part  of  the  book  no 
thoughtful  reader  will  reach  such  a  conclusion,  but 
for  the  beuefit  of  those  who  have  read  hastily  or 
perhaps  skipped  altogether  the  few  lines  devoted 
to  that  point,  it  may  be  as  well  to  reaffirm  that 
this  discussion  is  not  directly  concerned  with  evan- 
gelism as  such.  As  a  matter  of  fact  no  one  be- 
lieves more  firmly  in  the  necessity  of  the  new 
birth — regeneration  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  as  the 
great  fundamental  in  the  doctrines  of  Christianity 
than  does  the  writer.  Cut  that  out  and  all  we  have 
left  is  but  a  painted  picture,  beautiful,  but  lifeless 
and  powerless  so  far  as  weary,  sin-sick,  sin  bur- 
dened humanity  is  concerned.   The  essence  of  Chris- 


WHY     THEY     F'AIL  213 

tianity  is  a  Life  not  a  creed;  it  is  Christ  not  culture — • 
"Christ  in  you  the  hope  of  glory."  If  culture  could 
have  saved  the  world  it  would  have  been  saved  long 
before  Christ  came ;  but  the  beautiful  moral  pre- 
cepts of  Marcus  Aurelius,  Epictetus,  Buddha,  Con- 
fucius and  others  w^ere  but  straws  when  it  came  to 
stemming  the  turgid,  roaring  passions  of  the  human 
heart.  Let  us  not  forget  that  those  so-called  re- 
ligions of  our  own  day  which  claim  so  much  and 
appear  so  fair  and  so  effective,  are  so  simply  be- 
cause they  stand  in  the  reflected  glory  of  that  divine 
institution  against  which  the  gates  of  the  grave, 
which  swallows  everything  else,  shall  not  prevail. 
They  are  running  on  the  momentum  of  a  tide,  the 
origin  of  which  they  deride,  and  were  the)''  placed 
beyond  the  pale  of  its  influence  their  salvation-by- 
culture  doctrine  would  soon  appear  at  its  true 
worth ;  it  would  soon  show  itself  the  broken  reed  it 
is.  When  they  have  tried  it  successfully  on  the 
fierce  cannibal  of  the  South  Sea  Islands,  the  de- 
graded Hottentot  of  South  Africa  and  the  stranded 
wrecks  of  humanity  on  the  Bowery — when  they 
have  tried  it  on  them  and  produced  the  changes 
which  the  simple  gospel  of  the  love  of  God  in 
Jesus  Christ  has  produced,  and  is  daily  producing, 
we  shall  be  more  disposed  to  give  credence  to  their 
claims.  Till  then  we  may  well  be  excused  if  we  say 
the  gospel  of  the  great  atoning  Cross  is  good  enough 
for  us.  It  proves  its  divine  origin  by  its  works.  It 
is  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world.  At  the  same 
time  evangelism  is  not  all ;  the  teaching,  the  building 
up  is  hardly  less  important,  since  otherwise  the 
converts  must  remain  babes  and  each  new  genera- 
tion be  of  cripples.  "Train  up  a  child  in  the  way 
he  should  go,"  says  the  Guide  Book,  "and  when  he 
is  old  he  will  not  depart  therefrom" — and  "going" 
means  action,  does  it  not?    It  is  because  we  have 


214  WHY     THEY     F/ilL 

been  reading  that,  "Train  up  the  child  in  the  way 
he  should  think"  that  our  troubles  have  come  upon 
us  as  they  have. 

The  second  objection  will  be  raised  in  the  minds 
of  the  more  thoughtful.  It  is  this :  "Is  not  this  new 
doctrine  too  materialistic?"  In  reply  to  that  it  may 
be  said  that  in  the  first  place  the  prior  question  is, 
"Are  these  things  so?"  We  are  dealing  with  alleged 
facts.  "Facts  are  the  fingers  of  God."  God  is 
not  at  war  with  Himself,  and  if  these  things  be  so 
it  is  our  business  not  to  try  to  fit  the  facts  to  our 
theories  but  to  fit  our  theories  to  the  facts.  Chris- 
tianity is  never  afraid  of  the  facts,  for  so  far,  the 
facts  have  not  yet  discredited  Christianity.  Men 
have  erred  in  interpreting  the  facts  of  nature  on  the 
one  hand  quite  as  fully  as  they  have  erred  in  inter- 
preting the  Word  of  God  on  the  other,  and  from 
these  two  astigmatisms  of  science  and  theology  all 
the  mischief  has  come.  If  the  principles  on  which 
this  discussion  is  based  are  false,  then  certainly  this 
book  has  no  value  and  it  should  receive  short  shrift; 
but  if  on  the  other  they  be  true,  then  we  should 
recognize  them  and  order  our  conduct  in  harmony, 
leaving  the  results  to  God.  Theories  are  being  ex- 
ploded every  day,  but 

"Facts  are  chiels  wha  winna  ding 
An'  daur  na  be  disputit." 

We  need  not  be  alarmed  about  the  foundations 
so  long  as  there  is  so  much  disagreement  among 
our  adversaries.  The  tendencies  of  science  are  now 
more  and  more  toward  the  spiritual  as  the  ultimate 
explanation  of  all  that  is.  They  have  swung  from 
the  "fortuitous  concourse  of  atoms"  theory  to  the 
supreme  and  ever-acting  Will  as  the  more  probable 
hypothesis  in  accounting  for  this  universe.     Pure 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  215 

evolution  has  given  place  largely  to  the  "mixed" 
school  and  God  is  given  a  chance  to  put  in  a  word 
in  His  own  way.  "Nothing  in  evolution  can  ac- 
count for  the  soul  of  man,"  says  Alfred  Russel 
Wallace,  a  president  of  the  British  Association  of 
Science,  perhaps  the  highest  scientific  body  in  the 
world,  "the  difference  between  man  and  the  other 
animals  is  unabridgeable." 

Psychologists  are  also  far  from  agreeing  that  all 
there  is  of  us  is  finely  organized  matter.  Many  of 
the  most  distinguished  of  them  recognize  the  diffi- 
culties attending  such  a  hypothesis,  and  are  there- 
fore content  to  say  that  there  is  a  psycho-physical 
parallelism.  A  thought  is  something  which  is 
heavens-wide  apart  from  any  conceivable  molecular 
changes  in  the  gray  matter  of  the  skull ;  but  the 
brain  may  be,  and  without  doubt  is,  the  organ  on 
which  that  invisible  entity,  the  soul  of  man,  makes 
its  music  in  this  sphere  of  existence  in  which  we 
now  are.  And  just  as  the  finest  musician  in  the 
world  cannot  play  the  masterpieces  of  Beethoven, 
Wagner  and  Mozart  on  an  organ  which  has  only 
three  octaves,  or  has  not  the  required  stops,  so  the 
immortal  soul  is  conditioned  by  the  instrument  on 
which  it  plays.  Who  can  say  that  education  is  not 
wholly  a  brain  process?  The  world  would  never 
have  known  a  Paderewsky  or  a  Paganini  if  all  the 
instrument  they  possessed  was  a  jewsharp.  The 
brains  of  idiots  are  always  deficient.  If  the  soul  of 
a  Bonaparte  or  a  Caesar  were  encased  in  the  skull 
of  an  idiot  what  could  he  do?  He  would  be  to  us 
an  idiot,  producing  the  jewsharp  music  because  all 
he  had  to  play  on  was  a  jewsharp.  We  talk  of  ed- 
ucating the  soul  of  the  boy,  but  whether  we  can  ed- 
ucate his  soul  at  all  or  not,  who  can  tell  us?  What 
we  do  know  is  that  unless  we  efifect  certain  changes 
in  his  brain  there  will  be  nothing  of  what  we  call  ed- 


216  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

ucation  in  his  life.  If  the  neurones  in  his  brain 
never  myeHnate  he  remains  an  infant  in  understand- 
ing. All  the  education  in  the  world  is  as  though  it 
were  not  unless  it  makes  brain  tracks.  It  is  educa- 
tion only  as  it  does  make  brain  tracks,  and  the  more 
adaptive,  or  purposive  and  extended  those  tracks  are, 
the  more  potent  is  the  education.  The  kind  of  ed- 
ucation is  always  determined  by  the  kind  of  tracks. 
Auditory  stimuli  never  by  any  chance  produce  acro- 
bats, nor  olfactory  stimuli  musicians.  There  is  no 
use  quarrelling  with  the  facts.  At  the  same  time 
the  tracks  do  not  account  for  everything.  A  thought, 
a  feeling,  a  volition,  the  play  of  fancy,  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount,  Shakespeare's  plays  and  "Paradise  Lost" 
represent  something  more  than  chemical  and  electrical 
changes.  Mere  matter  won't  account  for  the  inte- 
grating process,  the  building  up  according  to  certain 
definite,  wise  and  beneficent  ends.  The  force  of  the 
teleological  in  the  human  body  is  inescapable. 
Nothing  we  know  of  matter  will  sufificiently  account 
for  the  forming,  breaking  and  modifying  of  connec- 
tions in  the  brain  to  good  ends,  as  when  the  burnt 
child  dreads  the  fire  and  flees  from  it. 

In  his  Psychology  Vol.  1,  page  137,  Professor 
James,  viewing  the  gulf  between  mind  and  matter, 
between  consciousness  or  feeling  and  motion  says: 

"If  this  is  so,  then,  common  sense,  though  the 
intimate  nature  of  causality  and  of  the  connection  of 
things  in  the  universe  lies  beyond  her  pitifully 
bounded  horizon,  has  the  root  and  gist  of  the  truth 
in  her  hands  when  she  obstinately  holds  to  it  that 
feelings  and  ideas  are  causes.  However  inadequate 
our  ideas  of  causal  efficacy  may  be,  we  are  less  wide 
of  the  mark  when  we  say  that  our  ideas  and  feelings 
have  it,  than  the  Automatists  are  when  they  say 
they  haven't  it.  As  in  the  night  all  cats  are  gray, 
so   in   the   darkness  of   metaphysical   criticism   all 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  217 

causes  are  obscure.  But  one  has  no  right  to  pull  the 
pall  over  the  psychic  half  of  the  subject  only  as  the 
Automatists  do,  and  to  say  that  that  causation  is 
unintelligible  whilst  in  the  same  breath  one  dogma- 
tizes about  material  causation  as  if  Hume,  Kant 
and  Lotze  had  never  been  born.  One  cannot  thus 
blow  hot  and  cold.  One  must  be  impartially  naif 
or  impartially  critical.  li  the  latter  the  reconstruc- 
tion must  be  thoroughgoing  or  'metaphysical'  and 
will  probably  preserve  the  common-sense  view  that 
ideas  are  forces,  in  some  translated  form.  But  psy- 
chology is  a  mere  natural  science,  accepting  certain 
terms  uncritically  as  her  data  and  stopping  short 
of  metaphysical  reconstruction.  Like  physics  she 
must  be  naicz'C ;  and  if  she  finds  that  in  her  very 
peculiar  field  of  study  ideas  seem  to  be  causes,  she 
had  better  continue  to  talk  of  them  as  such.  She 
gains  absolutely  nothing  by  a  breach  with  common 
sense  in  this  matter,  and  she  loses  to  say  the  least, 
all  naturalness  of  speech.  If  feelings  are  causes,  of 
course  their  effects  must  be  furtherances  and  check- 
ings of  internal  cerebral  motions,  of  which  in  them- 
selves we  are  entirely  without  knowledge.  It  is 
probable  that  for  years  to  come  we  shall  have  to 
infer  what  happens  in  the  brain  either  from  our 
feelings  or  from  motor  effects  which  we  observe. 
The  organ  wmII  be  for  us  a  sort  of  vat  in  which  feel- 
ings and  motions  somehow  go  on  stewing  together, 
and  in  which  innumerable  things  happen  of  which 
we  catch  but  the  statistical  results.  Why,  under 
these  circumstances  we  should  be  asked  to  for- 
swear the  language  of  our  childhood  I  cannot  well 
imagine,  especially  as  it  is  perfectly  compatible  with 
the  language  of  physiology.  The  feelings  can  pro- 
duce nothing  new,  they  can  only  reinforce  and  in- 
hibit reflex  currents  which  already  exist,  and  the 
original    organization    of    these    by    physiological 


218  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

forces  must  always  be  the  groundwork  of  the  psy- 
chological scheme. 

"My  conclusion  is  that  to  urge  the  Automaton" 
theory  upon  us,  as  it  is  now  urged,  on  purely 
a  priori  and  gwa^i-metaphysical  grounds  is  an  un- 
warrantable impertinence  in  the  present  state  of  psy- 
chology." 

This,  Professor  James  goes  on  to  substantiate  by 
pointing  out  that  consciousness,  whether  in  the  low- 
est sphere  of  sense  or  the  highest  sphere  of  intellec- 
tion, is  always  a  selecting  agency.  Consciousness 
is  a  result,  say  the  materialists ;  where  the  nervous 
organism  is  low  it  is  low  and  vice  versa.  But  Pflii- 
ger,  Lewes  and  James  say.  Yes,  but  consciousness 
works  downward.  Determinateness  goes  with  pre- 
cision of  action ;  instability  with  indeterminateness. 
If  it  were  all  determinate  there  would  be  no  choice; 
the  instability  of  cerebral  action  (illustrated  by  the 
adaptation  of  conduct  to  the  minutest  change  of 
environment,  or  action  determined  not  by  the  stimu- 
lus of  the  nearer  good)  permits  choice.  And  that 
choice  is  aht/ays  in  favor  of  the  subject's  interests. 
Consciousness  inhibits  what  is  not  in  the  line  of  its 
own  interests  or  the  interests  it  creates.  "Survival 
can  enter  into  a  purely  physiological  discussion  only 
as  an  hypothesis  made  by  an  onlooker  about  the 
future." 

1.  The  phenomena  of  vicarious  function.  "A 
brain  with  part  of  it  scooped  out  is  virtually  a  new 
machine  and  during  the  first  days  after  the  operation 
functions  in  a  thoroughly  abnormal  manner.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  however,  its  performances  become 
from  day  to  day  more  normal,  until  at  last  a  prac- 
ticed eye  may  be  needed  to  suspect  anything 
wrong." 

2.  Consciousness  is  most  vivid  where  nerve  proc- 
esses are  hesitant,    e.g.,    before    a    leap;    "in    rapid, 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  219 

automatic  action  consciousness  sinks  to  a  minimum. 
Nothing  could  be  more  fitting  than  this,  if  con- 
sciousness have  the  teleological  function  we  sup- 
pose; nothing  more  meaningless  if  not."    Why? 

3.  "Pleasures  are  generally  associated  with  benefi- 
cent, pains  with  detrimental  processes."  Why  not 
the  other  way  about?  Why  should  burning  not  give 
"thrills?" 

De  Sarlo,  a  leading  representative  of  the  school  of 
Wundt,  father  of  our  experimental  psychology,  says 
there  can  be  no  science  of  psychology  at  all  "unless 
a  real  subject  exists,"  and  calls  attention  to  the  fact 
that  if  psychology  postulates  mind,  every  other  sci- 
ence has  progressed  in  a  similar  way,  as  when  for 
instance,  life  is  postuated  in  biology,  the  atom  in 
chemistry  and  motion  in  mechanics. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  there  is  no  need  of 
alarm  on  our  part  while  the  apple  of  discord  still 
rolls  along  in  the  ranks  of  the  Philistines.  Christian 
Science  may  tell  us  that  consciousness  is  a  lie  and 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  matter  and  an  objective 
world;  materialism  may  tell  us  that  consciousness 
lies  suavely  when  it  tells  us  that  we  are  free ;  but 
here  are  other  voices  equally  prominent  crying  out 
to  us  to  hold  fast  to  our  "common-sense"  which  tells 
us  both  are  wrong,  for  universal  consciousness  tells 
no  lie,  and  that  there  is  both  matter  and  mind, 
choice  and  responsibility,  an  indestructible  entity 
perduring  through  all  change,  as  well  as  the  "bundle 
of  sensations"  which  David  Hume  believed  to  be  all 
there  is  of  us. 

Some  sensitive  readers  will  be  asking  how  this  re- 
flex action  teaching  squares  with  the  Word  of  God. 
The  reply  is,  admirably.  The  Bible  is  full  of  it.  The 
IMaster  taught  it  when  He  said  in  His  Great  Com- 
mission, which  is  the  charter  of  every  New  Testa- 
ment church,  "Go  ye      .     .     .      and  lo,  I  am  with 


220  WHY      THEY     FAIL 

you" — i.  e.,  when  you  go.  He  did  not  say  anything 
about  motor  discharges,  it  is  true,  because  his  hear- 
ers knew  as  little  about  that  as  they  did  about  the 
differential  calculus,  and  if  he  had  His  words  would 
have  been  without  interest  and  soon  forgotten.  The 
Bible  is  full  of  good  psychology,  but  it  is  expressed 
in  terms  of  the  concrete  that  it  might  be  of  use 
among  all  peoples.  The  end  is  everything,  the 
means  unimportant  as  long  as  they  are  not  vicious. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  questioned  whether  vicious  means 
can  attain  an  ultimately  good  end.  So  the  incite- 
ments are  over  and  over  again  to  right  courses  of 
conduct.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  a  disserta- 
tion on  how  to  behave  as  a  Christian.  The  Pauline 
writings  are  full  of  hortatory  applications  which  go 
far  toward  giving  color  to  the  doctrine  of  pragma- 
tism, that  Christianity  like  everything  else  must 
have  its  value  determined  by  its  works.  The  New 
Testament  is  full  of  precepts  that  mean  so  many 
motor  discharges  in  the  brain  when  heeded.  These 
precepts  are  very  beautiful,  but  as  a  general  thing 
they  do  not  grip  the  life.  Christian  people  do  not 
pretend  to  follow  them  as  they  follow  their  other 
guidebooks  when  going  on  a  journey.  The  ethical 
action  and  association  neurones,  you  see,  have  never 
been  developed,  so  that  all  they  can  do  is  to  make  a 
stagger  at  it,  beginning  late  to  develop  brain  tracks 
and  finding  the  process  one  which  is  both  long  and 
difficult. 

This  is  under  ordinary  conditions.  There  are  ex- 
traordinary circumstances  when,  under  a  special  ef- 
fusion of  the  divine  Spirit,  miracles  of  grace  are 
performed.  The  emotional  excitement  is  so  great  as 
to  produce  such  overflows  of  nervous  energy  as  in- 
hibit freely  the  old  impulses  and  vastly  hasten  the 
development  of  new  brain  tracks.  This  is  the  re- 
vival condition  previously  referred  to.    It  would  be 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  221 

very  nice  to  be  able  to  live  under  such  conditions 
all  the  time.  Maybe  we  should ;  but  the  history  of 
the  church  thus  far  does  not  show  that  it  has  been 
done  by  any  considerable  body  of  men  and  women 
over  long  periods  of  time,  especially  where  a  ground- 
work has  not  been  laid  for  it  by  a  careful  training 
in  childhood.  It  is  a  proverb  with  us  that  good  men 
come  from  good  homes,  and  if  you  investigated  the 
training  in  those  homes  you  would  probably  find 
that  no  small  part  of  it  had  to  do  with  the  actions 
of  the  boy.  He  was  taught  to  rise  up  when  his 
elders  entered  the  room,  to  lift  his  cap  to  the  ladies, 
to  be  kind  to  the  dog  and  the  cat,  and  to  help  his 
little  sister  put  on  her  coat  without  at  the  same  time 
pulling  her  hair.  And  when  we  say  that  he  was 
taught  to  do  so  we  mean  to  say  that  somebody 
stood  over  him  and  saw  that  he  did  these  things. 
It  was  the  doing  rather  than  the  telling  that  made 
the  man,  and  a  man  who  has  had  such  a  training  as 
that  in  his  tender  years,  though  he  sink  to  the  abyss 
of  the  social  world,  will  never  quite  get  away  from 
it.  There  will  always  be  something  more  of  the 
gentleman  about  him  than  there  is  about  the  sot 
beside  him  who  never  knew  such  influences.  And 
when  perchance  the  Spirit  of  God  creates  within  him 
a  new  life,  that  life  will  find  the  old  channels  all 
Igouged  out  and  needing  but  a  little  renovation, 
which  is  a  vastly  different  thing  from  having  to 
make  them  de  novo.  He  will  be  ready  for  a  career 
of  usefulness,  and  a  larger  career  of  usefulness  at 
that,  far  earlier  than  his  friend,  the  sot  beside  him, 
who  was  converted  at  the  same  time. 

Prodigies  of  physical  strength  and  endurance  have 
been  performed  by  men  and  women  under  the  stress 
of  a  burning  house  or  some  other  imminent  peril ; 
so  in  things  spiritual ;  but  in  both  cases  the  phe- 
nomena are  abnormal,  and  it  is  our  business  to  pro- 


222  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

vide  for  the  normal.  If  we  do  that  the  abnormal 
will  take  care  of  itself  when  it  comes,  and  do  so  to 
far  better  advantage  than  it  could  otherwise  have 
done.  We  may  not  shirk  our  plain  duty  to  the 
young  by  trying  to  foist  it  all  on  the  revival,  God 
will  be  able  to  work  all  the  better  for  our  having 
done  our  part. 

It  is  of  the  utmost  importance  that  the  Church 
make  some  adequate  provision  for  correlative  motor 
discharges  because  in  doing  so  she  will  find  a 
mighty  reflex  that  will  lift  her  into  new,  varied  and 
vigorous  manifestations  of  life.  When  the  Wes- 
leys  and  Whitfield  broke  the  spell  of  the  formalism 
of  the  established  church  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century  and  issued  their  call  to  the 
masses,  it  was  a  call  to  action — to  go  out  into  the 
highways  and  byways  with  the  good  tidings,  and 
to  give  expression  in  songs,  and  pious  ejaculations 
to  their  religious  feelings.  A  vast  wave  of  religious 
emotion  swept  over  England  and  on  its  refluent  cur- 
rent came  a  new  life  that  manifested  itself  in  various 
ways.  The  great  missionary  societies  in  England 
and  America  were  born.  Howard  and  Elizabeth 
Fry  were  moved  to  examine  the  festering  sores  of 
the  prison  pens  of  England  and  Europe.  Wilber- 
force  was  stirred  up  to  plead  "trumpet  tongued"  for 
the  abolition  of  the  slave,  and  the  masses  were 
stirred  up  to  demand  the  liberties  accorded  in  the 
Reform  Bill  of  1832. 

In  our  own  day  we  have  seen  something  anal- 
ogous. When  the  Christian  Endeavor  Society  was 
born  it  swept  over  the  land  and  around  the  world 
like  a  prairie  fire,  in  one  form  or  another.  Why? 
Because  it  formed  the  channel  of  expression  for 
those  good  impressions  stored  up  in  young  lives 
and  so  long  pressing  for  a  natural  channel  of  ex- 
pression.   June  is  June  and  January  is  January,  and 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  223 

the  two  do  not  travel  well  together.  Youth  felt 
naturally  under  some  constraint  in  the  presence  of 
its  elders.  A  deference  for  age  inhibited  in  the  so- 
cial meetings;  but  when  the  cleavage  came  the 
young  people  took  on  new  life  and  became  active 
in  many  helpful  ways.  The  movement  was  opposed 
at  first  of  course,  but  it  could  not  be  stopped,  and 
now  no  one  wants  to  stop  it.  Coming  closer  yet  to 
our  own  day  we  shall  find  another  illustration  of 
the  hunger  of  young  life  for  motor  expression  in 
that  blessed  institution  known  as  the  Boy  Scouts. 
Under  Mr.  Ernest  Thompson-Seton  in  America  and 
General  Sir  Baden-Powell  in  England,  the  move- 
ment has  broken  all  records,  enrolling  half  a  million 
in  a  year  or  two.  This  is  not  because  the  order  calls 
for  an  out-of-door  life,  has  a  military  twist  and  the 
romance  of  a  camp-fire  attaching  to  it,  but  because 
it  finds  a  natural  channel  of  expression  for  the 
swelling  energies  of  youth.  The  camp-fire  means 
action  to  us  all,  and  much  more  does  it  mean  de- 
lightful action  to  the  boys.  So  far  as  their  leaders 
are  concerned  it  means  the  putting  into  operation 
of  the  principles  underlying  the  Industr'al  Guild  of 
the  Great  Commission  in  another  field  and  for  some- 
what different  though  valuable  ends.  They  pro- 
pose to  develop  manliness,  hardiness,  observation, 
physique,  practicality  and  other  desirable  qualities 
by  the  actual  doing  of  those  deeds  which  alone 
will  produce  them.  It  is  another  training  in  the 
school  of  things  as  they  are.  Books  are  at  a  dis- 
count. It  is  the  deed  that  counts  every  time — the 
topographical  maps  and  observations  made  in  ac- 
tual scouting  in  strange  territory ;  the  endurance 
in  the  swimming  contest ;  the  actual  joints  "wiped" 
in  plumbing;  and  machines  made  in  mechanics,  that 
determine  the  awards  of  merit  and  the  standing  in 
the  juvenile  army. 


224:  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

No  wonder  the  organization  has  grown.  It  will 
do  immeasurable  good  in  its  own  way,  as  the 
George  Jr.  RepubHc  is  doing  for  another  class,  in 
another  way  that  is  at  bottom  similar.  Books  are 
good,  important,  necessary,  but  the  world  is  tired 
of  the  futility  of  books  and  precepts  alone.  They 
create  an  unreal  world  and  educate  away  from  the 
hard  world  of  actual  experience  when  they  do  not 
have  with  them  the  corrective  of  a  training  with 
things  that  can  be  measured  and  handled.  The 
boy's  conception  may  be  that  twelve  inches  are 
so  long — ,  but  when  in  the  manual  training  school  he 
is  required  to  make  a  foot  rule  he  finds  that  eleven 
and  three-quarter  inches  will  not,  by  any  kind  of 
juggling,  make  a  foot. 

"The  development  of  the  manual  act  carries  with 
it  a  noble  promise,"  says  Professor  Holmes  of 
Swarthmore  College,  "yet  with  a  sinking  heart  I 
see  my  little  folk  gradually  turning  as  they  have 
been  turning  in  the  few  years  of  their  school  lives, 
from  things  to  books.  My  friends,  there  is  peril 
in  the  printed  page.  Who  shall  know  this  if  not 
we,  who  are  students  and  teachers,  who  have  to 
fight  daily  to  keep  our  souls  alive  in  the  world  of 
things  from  which  the  world  of  books  invites  us." 

There  is  in  genetic  psychology  what  is  known  as 
the  law  of  transitoriness  of  instincts ;  that  is,  that 
the  active  powers,  like  the  flowers  of  the  field,  do 
not  ripen  all  at  once  but  in  a  certain  orderly  suc- 
cession. About  the  first  of  these  we  see  is  the 
sucking  instinct.  Everything  the  infant  gets  goes 
into  his  mouth ;  if  the  assay  be  favorable  it  is  ap- 
propriated, if  not  it  is  eliminated.  A  little  later  he 
is  seized  with  a  desire  to  creep ;  later  still  he  is 
seized  with  an  overmastering  impulse  to  stand  up 
and  to  walk,  and  the  leg  of  the  table,  a  chair,  a  sofa, 
anything  which  is  taller  than  himself  will  do,  and 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  235 

is  forthwith  commandeered  for  the  attempt.  When 
he  has  mastered  that  art  and  explored  all  the  little 
world  about  the  house,  a  process  which  may  take 
him  a  year  or  two,  the  social  impulse  becomes  dom- 
inant; he  sighs  for  other  worlds  to  conquer  and  it 
requires  two  policemen  and  a  nurse-girl  to  keep 
him  within  bounds.  Imagination  becomes  rampant 
and  he  sees  the  thousand  cats  under  the  barn,  which 
on  strict  analysis  turn  out  to  be  "something  that 
looked  like  a  cat,  anyway."  Then  memory  takes 
the  center  of  the  stage  and  nobody  knows  how,  when 
or  where  he  ever  learns  his  lessons.  They  seem 
to  come  to  him  in  his  sleep.  And  slowly  on  the 
heels  of  memory  judgment  enters,  halting  but  sure 
and  stately,  the  last  and  greatest  of  his  powers,  save 
:will,  to  mature. 

Somewhere  along  the  shining  pathway  of  those 
early  morning  years  he  will  enter  the  gloomy  for- 
est aisles  of  romance.  He  will  be  hungry  for  the 
strange,  the  grotesque,  the  unknown.  Since  go  seek- 
ing it  he  must,  he  will  go  armed  to  the  teeth  with 
bow  and  arrow,  cutlass  and  pistol,  or  Winchester 
and  the  automatic  that  rains  bullets,  a  thousand 
a  minute.  That  is  the  time  to  catch  him  and  load 
him  up  with  information  about  the  strange  man- 
ners, dress  and  customs  of  the  queer  peoples  our 
missionaries  know  of.  He  thinks  of  going  among, 
them  as  a  bandit  or  a  pirate,  but  that  is  only  be- 
cause he  thinks  (as  we  are  all  for  ourselves  apt  to 
think),  that  every  man's  hand  is  against  him,  till 
proof  to  the  contrary  is  forthcoming,  and  he  had 
therefore  better  be  prepared  for  the  worst.  To  give 
him  the  true  account  is  to  disarm  his  fears  and  it 
may  be  to  enlist  his  sympathy,  especially  if  it  be  his 
active  co-operation  that  is  called  for.  For,  after 
all,  what  he  pines  for  is  knowledge  and  action;  not 
action  without  knowledge,  nor  yet  knowledge  with- 


226  WHZ     THEY     FAIL 

out  action,  but  both  together,  and  if  we  can  only 
furnish  him  with  the  two  in  the  proper  doses,  at- 
tractively put  up,  he  will  swallow  them  cheerfully 
and  the  rest  will  take  care  of  itself. 

This  law  of  the  transitoriness  of  instincts  tells 
us  that  it  is  at  the  time  that  these  instincts  are 
flowering  that  we  should  be  most  active  in  our 
teaching  capacity  if  we  would  attain  the  best  re- 
sults. Just  as  a  boy  will  drink  greedily  when  he  is 
very  thirsty  and  absorb  much  more  fluid  than  he 
will  at  any  other  time,  so  mentally  he  will  absorb 
most  freely  and  most  effectively  a  particular  kind 
of  training,  if  we  give  it  to  him  at  the  psychological 
moment  when  the  instinct  is  efflorescing. 

And  if  the  information  the  boy  receives  about  the 
blacks  in  Borneo  be  directly  related  to  some  prac- 
tical activity  on  his  part  which  has  to  do  with  them 
in  a  real  way,  the  reflex  of  the  act  will  be  to  keep 
him  in  living  touch  with  the  reality  of  that  very  real 
world ;  and  he  will  have  a  consciousness  of  its  reality 
which  he  could  not  otherwise  have  had.  He  will 
not  then  find  "the  peril  in  the  printed  page,"  of 
which  Professor  Holmes  speaks,  and  he  will  not 
have  "to  fight  daily  to  keep  his  soul  alive  in  the 
world  of  things  from  which  the  world  of  books  in- 
vites us,"  for  he  has  kept  a  channel  of  communica- 
tion with  it  open  all  the  time. 

Finally,  what  are  we  going  to  do  about  all  this? 
If  it  be  true  that  we  have  in  our  Church  work 
largely  failed  to  turn  out  a  man  who  is  ethically  fit 
as  tested  in  the  market  place;  if  the  failure  be  due 
to  an  oversight — the  failure  to  provide  for  the 
proper  expression  of  ethical  emotions  and  ideas  in 
the  young;  if  it  be  possible  to  provide  such  chan- 
nels of  expression ;  if  the  Industrial  Guild  of  the 
Great  Commission  be  one  such  channel,  admirably 
adapted  to  the  requirements  of  about  two-thirds  of 


WHY     THEY     FAIL  237 

the  population  concerned ;  if  there  be  financial  pos- 
sibilities in  that  institution  far  beyond  its  own  re- 
quirements; and  if  the  imperative  need  of  the  hour 
be  larger  means  for  the  "unprecedented  advance" 
through  the  open  doors  set  before  us  in  every  land, 
what,  we  ask  again,  are  we  going  to  do  about  all 
this? 

That  question  the  writer  leaves  with  the  Church 
and  society  at  large.  He  feels  that  he  has  thus 
far  done  his  little  part  and  discharged  his  moral 
obligations  to  the  world  as  a  man  in  connection  with 
what  has  seemed,  to  him  at  any  rate,  a  matter  of 
the  very  deepest  concern  to  the  life  of  the  Church 
and  the  world.  This  has  not  been  done  without 
sacrifice,  but  that  is  neither  here  nor  there.  The  es- 
sential thing  for  every  man  is  to  find  out  what 
seems  the  right  thing  for  him  to  do  and  then  do  it. 
H'e  should  not  be  afraid  to  stand  by  the  arbitrament 
of  his  own  judgment,  once  a  verdict  has  been  care- 
fully reached.  Having  done  that  the  results  be- 
long to  God.  He  has  cleared  himself  before  him- 
self, which,  next  to  the  judgment  seat  of  the  Most 
High,  is  the  highest  tribunal  any  man  has  to  face. 
If  what  he  has  to  say  be  true  it  will  find  its  re- 
sponse in  the  heart  of  humanity  sooner  or  later, 
and  if  it  be  not  worth  hearing  it  should  fall  to  the 
ground  and  be  allowed  to  die. 

But  whether  this  or  that,  so  long  as  business  men 
think  they  can  trust  only  twenty-five  per  cent  or 
less  of  our  Sunday-scool  graduates  with  their 
$10,000  in  the  dark,  and  would  call  only  about  the 
same  number  of  men  out  of  the  lot,  manly  men ; 
and  so  long  as  so-called  Christian  America  is  ac- 
cused of  spending  $60,000,000  on  laces,  $15,000,000 
on  ostrich  plumes,  $25,000,000  on  chewing  gum, 
$78,000,000  on  candy,  $320,000,000  on  soda  water, 
and  but  $11,000,000  on  the  task  for  which  Christ 


228  WHY     THEY     FAIL 

died  and  for  which  we  are  supposed  to  be  alive, 
it  would  seem  that  any  kind  of  proposition  which 
looks  Hke  a  possible  solution  of  the  difficulty  should 
receive  a  fair  hearing,  a  careful  scrutiny,  and,  if  it 
bears  the  examination  well,  a  public  discussion  and 
proper  adjudication  in  every  court  of  competent 
jurisdiction.  Certainly  this  book  would  ask  foi; 
nothing  more. 


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Why  They  Fail 


The  Argument 


The  argument  in  "W/iy  They  Fail"  runs  thus: 

There  exists  a  widespread  moral  delinquency.  This  be- 
comes evident  on  the  most  cursory  examination  of  our  social 
life.  It  is  seen  in  politics,  commerce,  sports  and  the  courts, 
and  even  in  connection  with  the  church  itself,  which  has  for 
the  most  part  developed  a  type  that  is  "good  in  a  prayer 
meeting  but  bad  in  a  horse  trade,"  the  man  on  the  street 
being  the  judge.  This  is  not  because  the  church  has  lacked 
earnestness  in  her  great  work  but  because  she  and  the  rest 
of  us  have  overlooked  in  our  educational  work  the  Ethical 
application  of  the  second  and  perhaps  more  powerful  principle 
of  all  education,  viz.,  reflex  action.  The  result  of  this  fatal 
oversight  is  that  we  turn  out  a  boy  "but  half  made  up."  He 
has  a  lop-sided  brain.  He  knows  well  what  is  right  but  he 
falls  down  when  it  comes  to  doing  it.  Our  system  of  educa- 
tion has  built  up  moral  knowledge  cells  but  the  correlative 
moral  action  cells,  which  alone  give  the  power  to  do  the  right 
he  knows,  have  never  been  developed  in  his  brain.  He  knows 
the  good  but  finds  it  so  hard  to  do  it,  just  as  he  knows  about 
chop-sticks  but  finds  it  so  difficult  to  use  them,  and  for  exactly 
the  same  reason,  viz.,  that  the  group  of  cells  which  alone 
gives  power  to  do  the  act  has  never,  by  the  reflexes  of  his  own 
previous  similar  acts,  been  built  up  in  his  brain.  Men  fail, 
chiefly  not  because  our  present  system  of  education  is  wrong, 
but  because  it  is  like  a  one-legged  man,  woefully  incomplete. 
We  do  not  dream  of  ignoring  this  reflex  principle  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  boy's  intellect,  or  in  practical  life:  it  is  only 
in  the  education  of  the  soul  of  the  boy  we  presume  to  do 
without  it,  and  then  marvel  that  in  manhood  he  should  so 
lamentably  fail.  The  majority  must  continue  to  be  fore- 
doomed to  come  short  ethically  as  long  as  the  ethical  appli- 
cation of  this  reflex  principle  is  ignored.  The  leading  psycholog- 
ists and  neurologists  of  the  world  are  cited  in  support  of  the 
author's  main  contention  Chapter  V  gives  his  contribution 
to  the  task  of  working  out  the  application.  This  is  known  as 
the  Industrial  Guild  of  the  Great  Commission,  an  institution 
which  is  specially  adapted  to  rural  conditions,  or  about  60 
per  cent  of  the  population. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
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This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


APR  2  8  1950 


Form  L9-42m-8,'49(B5573)444 


THE  LIBRARY 

UNIVHRSITY  OF  CALTFORNli. 

LOS  ANGELES 


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1251  '^^W   they  fail. 
R56w 


,nn  o  b  iQCn 


BJ 

1251 


..,ro'^'Dzn\^M^\  I IRRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  505  632    0 


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